The Essences Of Life
by Heimchen
Summary: The fate of General Grievous could have been so different if only he'd learned the truth behind his extreme makeover. In this version of his career, spanning the events of the Clone Wars and ROTS, he does.
1. Plot Convenience Playhouse Presents:

Welcome to my summer project! As you no doubt instantly surmised from the story summary, I'm one of those Grievous fans who thought that this marvellous character was dealt a pretty raw deal in ROTS and deserved just a wee bit better. What follows then is my own idea of how things could have unfolded…think of it as an EU Episode 2 ½ which leads into a somewhat AU ROTS, with the emphasis throughout focused on the baddies: Grievous, Dooku, and the rest of the naughty Separatist gang. Also contains some original characters and a touch of Dragonball Z and I'll leave it for the next chapter intro to identify just what that last is in order to preserve any potential surprise. There will be some action 'n' adventuring once things get rolling…mostly, though, it'll be about how the characters think, feel, and interact, especially Grievous, so if that kind of stuff bores you to tears, better skip this one. If you do like this tale, please feel free to suggest scenes or ideas or situations that you'd like to see explored in later chapters. At this moment, I know how Grievous's story begins (obviously) and exactly how it ends, but there's an awful lot in between that's still up for grabs!

Disclaimer: All things Star Wars and Dragonballish are owned by their respective copyright holders. I'm just having a good time playing in these universes for fun and nonprofit.

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 1 - Plot Convenience Playhouse Presents:

It began with an old male's insomnia and a streak of light in the night. The elderly Markusian had never seen anything like it. The fireball emerged from the overcast and speared its way through the dark like any common meteor at first. Then its passage slowed, levelled, and it dipped lightly beneath the nearby hilled horizon. The Markusian listened for the rending thunder of a crash. It never came.

He thought of soldiers, weapons, invasions, and got up as fast as his old bones would allow and went to wake his son.

For Lissa Veleroko, it began as an unwelcome pounding that woke her far too early in the morning. She dragged herself out of bed, fumbled on a robe, stumbled her way through the dark to her front door, and opened it to a gaggle of her Markusian neighbours, all of whom were jigging up and down in a state of high excitement and frantically trying to talk all at once.

"Whoa! Stop. Slowly," she soothed, pressing her palms downward in a visual plea for calm. The burry warbles and trills of Markusian speech simply didn't lend themselves to human replication , but she'd learned to understand a fair amount of the aliens' language as long as they spoke slowly and distinctly, as though to a somewhat dimwitted child. They tried again, still talking too fast, more agitated than she'd ever seen them.

"A ship?" Lissa puzzled out at last. "A spaceship? Landing here?"

She pantomimed a swooping aircraft with one hand and the lot broke instantly into excited yelps of affirmation. "Ree ree ree!" they cried, their word for 'yes'. Lissa regarded the lumpy little creatures blearily, frowning and pulling absently at a lock of her long, sleep-tousled hair. It seemed extremely unlikely to her that any sort of spacecraft had landed nearby. Marku supported no native technology whatsoever and lay far off the usual trade and travel routes—its isolation was one of the things Lissa valued most highly. Yet there was no denying that only an extraordinary event could have coaxed these Markusians onto her porch in the middle of the night.

In the end, she decided to bring along two of her personal droids, an astromech unit, and a modified loader droid that could best double as ambulance transport in case anyone in the still hypothetical ship was injured. Two of the Markusians, the bravest ones, stayed on to lead the way. They amused Lissa with the distance they kept between themselves and her party as they marched along and the fearful glances they frequently shot back at the devil machines accompanying her.

Despite her guides' obvious fright and insistence, Lissa was nonetheless staggered when they topped one last rise and beheld what indeed looked like the gleam of dull metal at the periphery of the light thrown by the Markusians' torches. The instant the aliens spotted it, they ground to a halt and began to slowly back-pedal. Lissa pushed past them, ordering the loader droid to flash up a powerful floodlight as she hurried forward.

A starfighter! And it looked intact, the gouged spray of soil beneath its landing gear suggesting a landing that had been hard but by no means uncontrolled. Lissa examined the craft as best she could under the limited illumination. The design was utterly unfamiliar to her, the char streaks and dings and curls of smoke still drifting from the engines all too familiar. Room for one pilot. If such existed.

The two personal droids came up to her as Lissa tried to peer through the fighter's viewports. "Can't see a thing," she muttered. "Transparisteel, I think. Expensive stuff."

"Shall I try a high-intensity light, ma'am?" the larger of the personal droids offered. It was an odd-looking machine, configured somewhat like a grasshopper with delusions of becoming a centaur. The smaller droid, bucket-sized, hovering in mid-air at eye level, also had an insect mien about it. It appeared to be based on a child's drawing of a fat brown cartoon cricket.

"You'd have to risk blinding someone to get a light through these viewports, Trigger," Lissa said to helpful larger droid. "Try a thermal scan instead."

He aimed his long wedge of a head at the cockpit area of the starfighter and obliged. Lissa studied the image he transmitted to her scanner padd. The smaller droid, whose name was Gregory, dipped down and looked over the woman's shoulder. There was a body in the ship all right, with bright heat blooms still showing in the skull and chest. The extremities had already gone cold.

"That means he's dead," said Gregory, sagely.

"Thanks," said Lissa, sourly.

The two Markusian guides had long since disappeared. Just as well, Lissa thought. The little technophobes didn't need to see her pull the dead pilot out and bury him, proof in their minds of the dangers of tampering in all things unnatural. She sighed. It was just a recovery operation now. She called to the astromech droid and put him to work at popping the cockpit hatch.

They found the pilot slumped forward in his—or her?—seat, the front of the elaborate helmet almost touching the instrument panel. He was also wearing the strangest arrangement of flight armour that Lissa had ever seen, one that seemed to wholly cover the big body. No harness or restraining device. Had he lived long enough to strip it off or did the armoured suit itself somehow anchor him? The light was so poor that Lissa could barely see a thing within the cockpit. She leaned in and felt downward, reaching past the pilot's sides.

What in the world—! The woman pushed herself back up, astonished. A droid? She told Trigger to rear up and shine a light, grasped the broad armour-plated shoulders and tried to pull the pilot upright. He seemed abnormally heavy—Trigger had to help her. And when the head itself finally came up and lolled to one side…

A long, sweeping, bleached-white mask covering an inhumanly narrow face that wasn't wholly there. Lissa stared fascinated at the bonelike apparition. Her hands traced over the vocabulator embedded in the mask's lower end, felt over the flat bordering sensor plates and the mechanisms supporting the head. The workmanship was sophisticated, extraordinary. Even Gregory, who'd touched down and was now teetering on the cockpit's edge, seemed impressed.

"What type of droid is that?" he asked.

Lissa was smiling. "Oh, this is no droid," she replied softly. "Look."

She indicated the two apertures moulded into the faceplate like the ocular sockets of a skull. There were eyes in there, lidded and sunken, the skin about them pebbled and reddish, unmistakably organic. Lissa gently pried the closed lids of one of the eyes apart and revealed a large yellow iris bisected by a startling black slash.

"There's a person in there!" Gregory cried.

"Part of one." She let the long face go and began consulting her padd instead, using it to scan over the armoured body. "This explains your thermal readings," she explained to Trigger with rising excitement. "It's a cyborg. Alien, obviously. Extremely advanced. Damn, I wish I knew who built him!"

"You don't recognise the configuration?" Trigger asked.

"Not yet I don't. But I will! Just as soon as we get him back to the house. There aren't too many people who can create something like this. We'll have to get some DNA off him, too, identify his species. Someone's got to be looking for this fellow. And this starfighter, it's no cheap trinket either."

Gregory, who'd been staring hard at the particulars of the alien pilot's body himself, crossed his short little arms over the front of his plump body, or tried to, self-importantly. "I know what he is," he announced. "He's a Kalee."

"Kalee? And how would you know that?"

"Database search: alien species, sentient. Humanoid formed, sized. Red skin, scaly or pebbled. Eyes, yellow or gold iris, minimal white, vertical slit pupil. Cross-index with: military insignia, ritual markings. Paired lines hooked on one end. It's the only entry that fits."

"Ooo-kay," Lissa remarked, pleasantly surprised by the usually indolent droid's initiative. "So what are they like? Short-form, please."

"Male-dominated, clan-organized, warrior society. Strongly spiritual. Status is dominance-ordered."

"Sounds charming. A warrior, eh? Well, that makes sense. He looks like he would've been a fighter."

Said Trigger, "Ma'am, about the thermal scan, if he is a cyborg, wouldn't that render the readings misleading?"

Lissa, her scientific reverie broken, blinked hard, then blanched. Trigger was absolutely right. It was entirely possible that the pilot's organic portions were alive and she should have been giving the poor man emergency medical care instead of rhapsodizing about his droid components. As if to draw attention to her thoughtless oversight, the erstwhile corpse chose that moment to himself weigh in by suddenly emitting the distinct sound of a breath being raggedly drawn, followed by a rasping cough.

Gregory yelped and tumbled backward off the cockpit edge, somersaulting into flight mode. Lissa almost lost her grip and fell off herself. The only individual who kept his composure was trusty Trigger. He simply focused the light beam shining out of the end of his long triangular head onto the cyborg's face and watched carefully for further signs of revival.

Nothing. And it was lucky for all concerned that the alien cyborg did not revive at that point or else that would have been the end of them and of our story. All that did happen was that the sound of laborious breathing continued for a moment, then rapidly eased into silence.

Lissa felt just terrible. She reset her scanner padd and quickly found a heartbeat, biochemically generated body heat, blood pressure, and all the other basics and rhythms of living flesh encased within the metal chest. He'd been sitting there the whole time, needing help and not receiving it. Abashed, assisted by Trigger and Gregory, she soon had the unconscious pilot out of his ship and draped over the lifting prongs of the loader droid and on his way to her house, where he'd hopefully get a lot better care than he'd gotten so far.

TBC


	2. No Return Invite For This One!

Lots more Grievous this time around and that's how it should be…all you devoted Grievophiles, enjoy! Also, thanks so much for all the kind comments to date. They are appreciated. This chapter should clear up a well-noted query or two as well. The character of Gregory is the touch of Dragonball Z content, except that he's an alien in his universe, not a droid. If I could have created an original character that was similar enough to please me without seeming like a rip-off, I would have, but I couldn't, so here he is. Hope you don't mind his continued presence in a Star Wars story… 

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 2 – No Return Invite For This One!

The early morning sunshine warmed Lissa's face as she gulped down the last of yet another cup of java. She needed it, badly. What a night it'd been! The greenish sky was crystal clear, the air mild and calm. It looked like the start of a beautiful day. Yet another reason for Lissa to like Marku. Its benign weather generated a lot of beautiful days.

The woman was standing in the big open bay door entrance to the enclosed space that served as her lab and office, workshop and attached garage, all in one. The other end of the simple rectangular building she called home housed her actual living quarters, which she shared with her droids. She and the droids had built the prefab structure several years ago, doing all the work themselves, their Markusian neighbours watching with good-natured interest from afar although they wouldn't do a stroke to help out. They were still like that, still refusing to visit or even closely approach her abode under normal circumstances, yet perfectly willing to be friendly whenever she entered their village for supplies or just to smooze. As long as she left her machines behind. That was just the way it had to be.

Her small space shuttle sat parked a short distance away, weeds growing up and twining in amongst the landing struts. She hadn't used the vessel in an awfully long time.

Lissa strolled back through her big open workspace and through the connecting doorway into her living area to return her empty mug. Lola, her silver-plated protocol droid, snapped it up at once, making a huge deal out of the simple task of cleaning it. The protocol droid's actual designation was L-0LA, but naturally that had gotten subverted into its current form in next to no time. She'd been programmed with a female personality by someone who'd evidently had a thing for giddy, talkative airheads, and was just as silly as she was efficient.

Lissa didn't mind. Lola's chatter was just part of the background noise of the woman's comfortable, everyday life. Of course, there'd been nothing everyday about the past couple of hours.

She returned to her workspace eagerly. All was as she'd left it. She dropped down into her chair again, leaned forward, propped her face with her hands, and then just sat, looking down, her flaxen greying hair trailing past her cheeks, slate-coloured eyes bright with curiosity and anticipation.

Her delightfully intriguing visitor lay on blankets that she'd spread over a cushioning mat on the floor. She and Trigger could've probably muscled him into the house proper despite his weight—a whopping 157 kilos, according to the loader droid—but the gesture would have been pointless. He was far too big for her bed or couch and besides, she wanted him close to her lab equipment in order to properly examine him. She'd known he was Geonosian-built as soon as they'd gotten him out of his ship and she'd seen his long legs with their low-set hock and stifle joints and big, clawed, grasping feet. The Geonosians often went for a spare functionality modeled after their own lean frames, everything pared down to the essentials, nothing exaggerated or without its purpose. This cyborg's body was like that, just a really beautiful, a consummate design.

His faceplate was the most unfamiliar and alien-appearing thing about him. There was some art there… Someone had gone to the trouble of sculpting in a subtlety of form and elegance of line that endowed him with a certain expressiveness. She studied the vertical marks etched into the mask above his eyes, the paired ritual lines Gregory had referenced. Someone had done that too, preserved this symbol of his Kaleesh heritage. Lissa found it impossible to speculate on why the Geonosians would work with a Kalee in the first place. She didn't exactly keep up with politics.

She lifted one of the cyborg's hands up between her own to admire its construction. He'd been given six digits, four fingers and two opposable thumbs, almost wholly coated with ceramic duranium, the same as his armour plating, yet they remained fully flexible and dexterous, almost delicate in appearance. Most amazing of all, his hands and entire arms were designed to split in half and function independently—it was one of the damnedest features she'd ever seen.

She kept hold of his hand while she considered the man within the alien-designed body. His continued unconsciousness was worrisome. The droids she'd sent back out to his fighter at dawn had already found and repaired a coolant leak, and when Lissa had drawn a little blood to confirm his species ID, she'd also run a quick tox screen that had revealed trace residuals of some unspecified contaminant. It was probable that her visitor's air supply had been poisoned. It was further probable that a programmed failsafe had forced him into torpor before he'd inhaled a lethal dose, in which case all she had left to do was kick back and wait for the cyborg's body to complete its job of detoxifying his organics. His vitals seemed good and had been growing steadily stronger ever since he'd first shown signs of life. But still she worried, and she wished he would wake up soon.

Lola was fussing again, unable to decide on some inanity to do with lunch, and Lissa went back into her living area for a bit to tend to her request. The protocol droid was always finding something to agonize over. When she, Trigger and Gregory sometimes got into it together, Lissa would swear it was like having three young teeners in the house.

Crisis averted, the woman hurried back to her workspace. She'd rather not leave her guest alone to revive by himself. He was sure to be confused, would undoubtedly appreciate reassuring words as he woke up, a kind smile…

The cyborg sprang at her the instant she entered and slammed her up against the nearest wall. "Where am I!" he hissed directly into her face.

Lissa gasped for breath, utterly confused. She had no idea how she'd suddenly gone from stepping through the doorway to being pinned on the wall. The intervening action had been so fast that all she really registered was that the mask-like faceplate she'd been earlier admiring was now entirely filling her field of vision and that the eyes glaring out of the faux sockets were wild and molten and terrifying in their burning intensity.

"Answer! Where AM I!"

"Mar-Marku," she managed to choke out. "A planetoid. You're in my home."

"Who are you?"

"Lissa Veleroko. Human. Civilian. No threat whatsoever, I promise."

Her words, promptly delivered, seemed to mollify him. The all-encompassing vision of his bone-white face withdrew. She became aware of his hands painfully engulfing her shoulders, squeezing them, then letting go. He stepped back, away from her.

Lissa had to look up at him, way up. He was a big sucker all right.

"Your starfighter landed nearby," she went on in a still shaky voice. "We found you unconscious in it, brought you here to try and help you."

"We?"

"My droids and I."

But he'd already lost interest in her. He began casing her workspace. Lissa watched, with fascination and not a little awe. He'd self-evidently recovered perfectly from his ordeal all on his own. His motions were impressively graceful despite his extensive droid components. He moved like a living thing, balancing his weight easily, his feet stepping lightly, not machine-like at all. And had that been a breathy live undertone to his husky, accented, synthesized voice? She wished he'd say more, but was too leery of interrupting him at his self-appointed surveillance to initiate further conversation.

When he heard the drift of Lola's voice starting in on a fresh round of fussing, he rushed to the interconnecting doorway at once and went through. "Oh shoot," Lissa muttered, and ran after him.

The cyborg roared through the house like a whirlwind, checking every room, terrifying Lola, moving sometimes at an arrogant high-headed walk, other times slouching into a half-crouch during which he'd dart forward at a slinking run that seemed to float him over the ground. He didn't stop until he'd strode outside—Lissa and the gibbering Lola watched through the window as he stood for a moment in the front yard, restless, wary, his head swivelling about. Then a dash out of sight to one side and they soon heard the clack of his clawed feet on the hard floor in the workspace again.

Lissa found him staring at some droid prototypes on one of her workbenches.

"You're, ah, welcome to examine those," she called, desperate for some sort of rapport with him, to get him talking. The look he flung at her was vile. She felt her patience and goodwill starting to slip.

"Your body is Geonosian-designed, isn't it? And you, you're Kaleesh, yes?"

That finally got his attention. She saw his eyes widen, showing the whites. "How do you know that?" he snarled.

"Well, I guess I can read a damn DNA analysis!"

Her subconscious was turning somersaults by now, pleading with her to please desist, to mind her mouth, to give some thought to her visitor's lethal potential, but she steadfastly ignored it. The cyborg regarded her with a speculative air.

Her work desk and terminal caught his eye and he pushed aside her chair and began accessing her computer from a standing position. Lissa opened her mouth to yell at him, changed her mind, and planted her hands on her hips instead, her expression deeply disapproving and not a little disappointed. To hell with him, she thought. He wouldn't get far.

Sure enough, it only took a few minutes before he ran up against the crypto-vault. His hands slowed over the keyboard, stabbed in a sequence, stopped, stabbed again. Lissa could tell by the tension in his stance that his futile efforts were frustrating him. After a further moment, his long face turned slowly towards her, the simple motion alone exuding remarkable malevolence.

"You've secured some of your files," he stated, his tone low and menacing.

"Yes."

"Release them."

"Sorry, no."

"Release them now!" he demanded.

"Damn it, no!" Lissa shot back "Who do you think you are!"

The cyborg bridled, whirled, and stormed towards her. Lissa watched him advance with the same expression on her face with which people sometimes watch the approach of a tornado or wildfire, too stupefied by their own dumb fascination to flee before being engulfed by the very disaster enthralling them. He seemed to loom higher and higher as he came. In that instant, Lissa understood better than any human being before her the true meaning of the term 'towering rage'.

He glared down at her and she stared right back. Inexplicably, she found herself wondering whether the sulphurous fire blazing in his orbs was due to natural eye shine or artificially generated by the cybernetic implants.

His attention shifted. He focused inward. He jerked back, breaking the impasse, and swung about and headed for the big bay door. She ran after him and watched him halt outside and tuck his face and begin twisting his head from side to side, holding it at strange angles. He began stabbing with one hand at something on his arm, angrily. Everything he did seemed laced with hatred and violence.

"Uh, the offworld reception's very bad here," she called. He looked at her and she motioned downward at the ground. "Lots of metal. Ore deposits."

"Take me to my ship," he ordered.

Lissa was more than happy to obey. He was one visitor she couldn't get rid of fast enough. He dogged her steps and hovered unnecessarily close to her the whole time they hiked to his landing site, all but breathing down her neck, refusing to walk abreast or go on ahead, even though having to restrain his stride to match her own was clearly a great irritation to him. As soon as he saw his starfighter, however, he sped past her with his peculiar running walk, gliding over the ground.

Gregory, who had no doubt assigned himself the task of supervising the other droids and so was basically doing nothing but hovering in place, saw the cyborg striding up and his mouth fell open in a comical exaggerated 'o' of surprise. He began to fly forward, to greet their guest, identified and processed said guest's expression and attitude with rather more intelligence and a far better sense of self-preservation than had Lissa, and wisely decided to get the hell out of the way. The alien cyborg swept by, ignoring him. He ignored all the droids as he rapidly did a walkabout of his ship, then put a hand on the edge of the open cockpit and leapt up and in with breathtaking ease.

Lissa found herself running after him for the third time that morning. "We replaced…some coolant for you," she panted, "and the feed line…a section ruptured and the droids fixed it."

She might as well have been speaking to the ship itself. The cyborg's attention was focused on his instrument panel. She could hear the whispery clatter of his duranium fingers as they worked unseen controls. Probably running his own diagnostic checks. It was what she would have done before declaring the starfighter fit for service again.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, never mind that he'd been nothing but aggressive, ungrateful and surly from the start, Lissa was still shocked when he suddenly fired up his engines without the slightest warning or saying a single further word to her. She had just time enough to scramble away from the ship's side—as did Trigger and Gregory—and fling herself to the ground before the starfighter blasted off almost straight up into the air, showering them all with an enormous gust of hot dust and debris. The astromech droid, slower to retreat, was tossed end over end. It came to rest upside-down in a bush twenty meters away.

Lissa rolled slowly back up onto all fours and then to her feet and spat out a mouthful of sand. The starfighter was already just a speck in the sky. "Unbelievable!" she croaked, watching it wink out of sight.

"Ditto," Gregory sniffed, as he came flitting back to his mistress. "That was a rude man. A very rude man!"

"He was rather discourteous," Trigger agreed. A small branch had gotten tangled up in the two long spatulate antennae perched like ears on top of his long head, making him look woebegone and ridiculous. "Are you all right, ma'am?" he asked with concern.

"I'm fine. And trust me, you don't know the half of it," Lissa replied with a grin.

She pulled the branch out from between Trigger's antennae, let Gregory settle into her arms for a reassuring cuddle, and the three of them went to rescue the upended, forlornly beeping astromech unit. No harm done in the long run, and that was the main thing. The personal droids would enjoy hearing about what had happened at the house and Lola would be in a tizzy for days.

She also found herself feeling supremely relieved that their nasty guest hadn't discovered all the deep scans she'd taken of him—whoa!

Lissa Veleroko would have felt a lot more relieved had she ever had any inkling of who her guest had really been. He was no ordinary cyborg, this part machine, part alien being who'd just left her household in an uproar and rocketed away. He was a creation of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the Supreme Commander of the Separatists' mighty droid armies, and his name was General Grievous. And at just that moment, the good General was in one of the foulest moods yet of his strange and altered existence.

He still wasn't sure which was worse, the excruciating humiliation of discovering that the body he now lived in could override his will and shut him temporarily down like a piece of overheated equipment, or that of waking up to find that he'd been captured by an unarmed human female and a pack of worthless service droids. Luckily for him, the woman had turned out to be some sort of moronic do-gooder who was naïve beyond belief and without apparent affiliations, but he'd still have to do something about her. She'd ferreted out far too much information about him already.

The comm box on his instrument panel cracked and spat and suddenly resolved itself and emitted a perfectly good clear signal, the same one he'd detected trying to reach him back on the planetoid. He stabbed on the speaker and made contact with one of his battle droid commanders.

"—reach you, General Grievous. Are you all right, sir?"

"I'm fine," he snapped. "Status?"

"Battle zone secured. Operational standby," the reedy voice of the battle droid supplied promptly. "We dispatched AGDs117 and 239 to recover you, but had trouble establishing your precise location, sir. Our apologies for the delay."

"There was some local interference. Which AGD is closest to me?"

"I am, sir. 239."

"Vector me in. I'm coming aboard."

Grievous punched in the codes he received, then sat back, letting the automated systems take over, feeling a degree of calm for the first time since regaining consciousness. In truth, he would have preferred rejoining his fleet via his own starfighter, but he simply didn't trust the repair work that had just been done to his ship. One of the AGDs—heavily armed, exclusively droid-manned frigates—would get him back almost as fast and could accommodate and check over his personal craft in the meantime.

His relief vanished when he set foot on what passed as 239's bridge and was told by the ship's captain that Count Dooku was expecting a call ASAP.

A communications alcove set off to one sided offered a measure of privacy once Grievous ordered the nearest droids away. Grievous thought he would need it and he was correct. Dooku was not at all happy with him.

"General Grievous. At last," the hologram of his superior said as soon as it appeared. Count Dooku, the human political head of the Separatists and Commander In Chief of Grievous's armies, had a suave, low-timbred voice perfectly in keeping with his well-bred looks and aristocratic bearing. It was also a voice well suited for dripping sarcasm, as Grievous was about to experience first-hand. "I was informed earlier of the particulars of the skirmish your fleet just engaged in. Imagine my surprise to find myself being briefed not by my battle commander, but by one of his droid subordinates. Would you care to account for your whereabouts for the past six hours, General?"

"My fighter came under fire and was somewhat disabled. I jumped blind in order to avoid destruction and emerged from hyperspace in an atmosphere. My ship flamed out. I had to land and wait for the engines to cool," Grievous explained, deciding on the spot to edit out certain facts of his most recent brush with death. Dooku frowned.

"Your fighter. Your starfighter, you mean," the Count intoned.

"Yes."

"And you were in your starfighter doing—what? Leading the battle? Inspiring your troops? Please tell me that you weren't thinking that you could inspire your fellow droids with a show of reckless heroism, General."

"I…" Grievous hated how the human could make him feel a fool with only a few choice words and a glance. His reply trailed off. There was nothing he could really say in his defence.

"This sort of behaviour is unacceptable," Dooku went on. "I insist that it stop. It isn't the first such incident. You also took unnecessary risks on Hypori."

"All superior leaders take risks," Grievous pointed out.

"That may be," said Dooku, "but you must understand, General, that you represent a substantial outlay of funding and technology and as such owe us a great debt. I won't have you squandering that investment. Your duty is to provide leadership and win battles, not engage in your own petty vainglorious pursuits."

Grievous bore the chastisement in stony silence, with only the slight tightening of the skin about his eyes betraying his resentment.

Dooku continued to look his Supreme Commander over with some distaste. "Perhaps we should assign you a personal pilot in the future. It might aid in helping you to avoid any further unnecessary side trips," he concluded.

That finally prompted a response. The cyborg jerked his sleek head up a tiny notch. "Count Dooku, there is one further matter concerning my…side trip," Grievous rasped, his voice rougher than usual. "I may have discovered an unexpected resource."

"Oh?"

"A private researcher. On the planetoid I landed on. She has some knowledge of cybernetics."

"A woman? What species?"

"Your own, Count. Human."

"Indeed. And you believe her knowledge may be of use to us?"

"She recognized that my droid components were Geonosian-built. I was able to scan some of her research. It has value."

The patrician features were already shifting, assuming an expression far more approving. "I see. Then perhaps your little escapade was not entirely worthless after all. May I assume that you'll secure this resource and have no trouble persuading the woman to, ah, cooperate?"

Grievous let his face tilt downward and his eyes hood over menacingly. "None whatsoever. She is alone and helpless," he growled.

Dooku smiled. "Carry on then, General."

"Count."

As soon as the holographic image of his superior faded, the cyborg's big body hunched over and his hands slammed down on the console on either side of the holo-emitter. The long fingers curled up into tightly clenched fists.

Fellow droids! Reckless heroism!

TBC


	3. Contractual Talks

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 3 – Contractual Talks

The day after his adventure on Marku, General Grievous left his fleet again and took a task group out to meet an incoming convoy of Neimoidian vessels. There was absolutely no operational requirement for him to rendezvous with the convoy, nor had the Neimoidians requested an escort. The only reason Grievous went out to meet them halfway was to see the Neimoidian leader, Nute Gunray, squirm.

The General knew full well that Viceroy Gunray despised him, but even he would have been surprised by the depths of disgust his very existence engendered. In many ways, Grievous was every Neimoidian's worst nightmare brought to life: A droid that had somehow acquired free will and gained authority over the living. The Viceroy's entire staff loathed and feared Grievous to some degree, to the point where they often referred to him simply as 'that creature' whenever they spoke of him amongst themselves. Nute Gunray had an even more unflattering private moniker for Grievous. He always thought of the alien cyborg as 'the abomination'.

When Gunray learned that the abomination was coming out to meet him on this particular day, he was so upset that he couldn't even finish his morning meal. He'd been expecting at least two more days of peace before he'd have to deal with the horrible cyborg and now that peace was shattered. It was intolerable, and so unfair too, thought Gunray, that he was still suffering the General's harassment just because of a little slip of the tongue made months ago during their first meeting on Geonosis. How could he have been expected to know that the abomination had some psychotic craziness in him about being mistaken for a droid, and really, what did Grievous expect people to think when they saw him?

The Neimoidian slunk off to try and find a more impressive formal outfit to hide within and to round up his aide and ruin his day as well.

When Grievous came aboard, he made his entrance the way he always did when dealing with Gunray, stretched upright to his full imposing height so he could look down on the tall Neimoidian and striding haughtily and fast to make his flowing cape ripple back off his impressive armoured shoulders. Gunray received him sourly.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, General," the Neimoidian lied.

"Yes, it is," Grievous agreed. "Forgive my eagerness, Viceroy, but when I learned that you were near and thought of sending your troops into battle, I could not wait to take charge of them a second longer."

Gunray was so incensed by the abomination's smug proprietary tone that his hatred for him momentarily flared even brighter than his fear. "You'd better take care with my ships," he blustered warningly. "There are some brave men on those crews."

That was a laugh, thought Grievous. He hadn't met a Neimoidian soldier yet who'd struck him as being anything better than walking cannon fodder. He wished he could tell Gunray exactly what he thought of his so-called brave men, but was too mindful of his superior, Count Dooku's, sharp insistence that he not antagonize the Viceroy beyond reason. The Neimoidians' Trade Federation was just too valuable a player. Theirs had been the first organization to come under the sway of Dooku and Lord Sidious, and they still supplied the bulk of the ordnance and vessels under Grievous's command.

Even Dooku couldn't prevent the General from exercising his right to inspect said ships and weapons first-hand, however. As he and Gunray walked along, Grievous let his body relax into its more usual partial slouch and lowered his head and extended his neck. He knew perfectly well that the posture gave him something of the aspect of a stalking predator and that it made Gunray nervous, and he enjoyed the instinctive flinches he could sometimes scare out of the rubbery alien leader if he moved just so with sufficient menace.

Grievous spent the rest of the day shuttling from ship to ship, meeting with the new captains and their executive officers, looking over their operational setups and armament, getting a sense of what and who he now controlled and could expect of these particular Neimoidians and their machines. Nute Gunray and his repulsively fawning aide trailed after him throughout, becoming more and more annoying, until he finally ditched them with the excuse of needing to return to his command vessel. The Neimoidians let him go, happily, and made no attempt to extend any after-hour social niceties. They most especially did not try to invite him back for dinner. They knew that the alien cyborg neither ate nor slept, just one of the many reasons they found him such an unsettling, exhausting, horrid creature to deal with.

While Gunray and company recovered, Grievous remained on duty—he was always on duty. As the hours wore on and the watches aboard his ship turned over during what passed as a night, he read over all the new vessels' specs and their maintenance records and their crew listings. He studied his background research on the ships' classes, their history of usage and their construction, and fixed all the points he thought significant or of potential use in his mind. The work came easily to him. He'd always had an excellent memory, a good head for detail, an eye for the ebb and flow of battle. It was all part of what had made him such an outstanding warlord during the days when he was still flesh and blood and savagely decimating his enemies, and what had most attracted the attention of the people who'd gone on to oversee his resurrection from near-death and make him over into the half-machine being he was now.

They'd left him all of it, all his analytical skills and keen intellect and his cunning and his love of warfare, all the qualities that still made him the perfect strategist and tactician, the perfect general. In other ways, the ways that made him Kaleesh and a man, he'd been profoundly damaged. He still remembered that he had a family on Kalee, awaiting his return, he just didn't care anymore. He no longer prayed and he'd forgotten the faces of his ancestors. Grievous did not know that the people he now worked for had tried to erase him as a personality. He understood only that he felt constantly driven to conquer and kill.

Fortunately, it was easy to keep himself occupied. There was a whole galaxy out there, with thousands of worlds and species left to master, and Grievous felt compelled to learn everything he could about each and every one of them. Dooku had already assigned him a new world in need of subjugation, the planet Damerung. Grievous turned his prodigiously enhanced mind onto the subject of its overthrow, and by the time he and the Neimoidians reached his main fleet, his battle plans for its invasion were already drawn up and near-complete, with only slight adjustments left to be made subject to the latest intelligence. It had been a good couple of days. Now he felt up for some recreation.

Grievous turned the final integration of the new Trade Federation ships over to his droid officers and carried on with his task group to find the droid tender he'd diverted off and left orders with several days ago. The tender had once been owned by the Intergalactic Banking Clan, used by them as something of a giant movable warehouse for the repossession of goods on those unfortunate occasions when IBC clients reneged on their payments. Its cavernous storage bays had been easy to convert into specialized labs and repair shops, and it now served to help maintain and constantly upgrade the mechanical troops of the Separatists' droid armies instead.

Grievous's timing proved impeccable. The droid tender's crew was still engaged in its salvage operation. He ordered his own ships into position and boarded the enormous support vessel.

He found the crew unloading all they'd looted into one of the lower bays that was still being used for its original intended purpose. The human female, largely undamaged, he was satisfied to note, had been herded off to one side with her collection of droids and was being guarded by several battle droids. She looked scared and utterly bewildered and was clutching the little brown flying droid he remembered seeing near his crash site in her arms, but there was also a hint of steely outrage about her, waiting to be expressed once she'd assessed her situation a little longer. Grievous came to a stop close by and watched the proceedings with interest, waiting for the woman to notice him.

As soon as she did spot him, she froze, then dropped the small brown droid onto the back of the six-legged one, ordered the lot of her machines to be absolutely still and quiet, and resolutely pushed past the battle droid guards and began hurrying over to him. She had some grit in her. Most people in like circumstances, Grievous knew, would've been much happier showing him their backs.

"It is you, isn't it?" Lissa exclaimed as she came up. "From Marku? Please, do you know what's happening here? Can you do anything about it?"

"I orchestrated it."

She recoiled as if struck, jamming to a halt. "What?"

"We have need of your services. From now on, you'll be working under the auspices of the Confederacy Of Independent Systems."

"The what? Who?"

Her confusion was beginning to irritate him. "You'll be working for me," he simplified.

That one sank in. "You? You're doing this? You're kidnapping me?" He watched as she wrestled with the revelation, her affective human face contorting. "How could you do this to me?" she quavered. "We helped you!"

"And now you'll help some more," Grievous added, meanly, and her expression hardened again. Better, he thought. He despised weakness. Weakness was boring. It was much more entertaining to assert his will over the strong-minded.

Lissa was shaking her head, stubbornly.

"No, I don't think so," she said in response to his words.

"You're refusing my offer?"

She gave him a dirty, sullen look. "I guess I am."

As expected. He snapped his head up and strode past her to the nearby wall without another word. There was a shielded viewport set there, a big one. Grievous hit the control that opened the blast shutters.

A starred vista filled with huge lurking starships revealed itself. Lissa joined Grievous at the viewport, walking with slow, dragging steps. She looked over the vessels, bristling with weaponry, recognized what they were and recognized the small planetoid they were pointed at, and slumped a little and her face fell.

"What is all this?" she asked, wonderingly.

"My army."

"Your army? Yours, personally? Who are you, anyway?"

The General's temper, always short, snapped its tether. "Are you completely stupid or is this an act?" he snapped at her.

The woman drew herself up with wounded dignity. "I'm apolitical," she said. "I don't follow the news."

"Then you're a fool."

Grievous produced the ops padd he'd been holding all along. It was a considerably bigger instrument than the usual scanner padd, with a much larger screen, and the cyborg clapped it up against the viewport with one hand where Lissa couldn't help but see it. He lifted his other arm and spoke into the communicator embedded in its forearm, already keyed and open.

"Fire control, link targeting image to my padd," he said. "Begin magnification, standard increments, three second intervals."

A picture of Marku appeared on the ops padd's screen, a picture that rapidly changed to provide an even closer view of the planetoid, then closer again. Lissa looked nervously from the ops screen image to the unaltered scene visible through the viewport, back at the ops image. She understood that the picture must be coming from one of the ships close to Marku, being transmitted at the General's behest.

"Do you see it?" Grievous asked in his low, husky voice.

The ops image continued to magnify. She could see geographical features now, a range of hills, plains…

Grievous spoke again. "Will you work for us?"

More details now. Lissa saw a spray of dots, which resolved into an aerial view of familiar simple huts, then—

"Hey!" she exclaimed.

The cyborg's eyes narrowed, glinting within the shadowed sockets of his mask. "Will you work for us?" he breathed, almost whispering.

She could see individual Markusians now, clustering together. They must've been terrified by her abduction.

"Leave them alone!" Lissa cried. "They've got nothing to do with me! Don't hurt them!"

"Fire control—"

"No! Wait! Stop!" The woman was so frantic that she clutched her own head in her panic. "All right! All right, I'll cooperate!" she yelped.

Grievous stared at her, coldly calculating. Then, "Abort primary target. Select secondary target. Fire at will."

A bloom of fire emerged at once from one of the giant warships facing Marku. The outermost of the planetoid's three small satellites abruptly seemed to lurch in its orbit and began to come apart. Chunks of it started to explode out in all directions.

Grievous left the human female sagged up against the viewport to think things over. "That was a nice moon," Lissa whimpered to herself as he walked away.

TBC


	4. A Special Way Of Going

I'm blushing with pleasure over the kind words y'all keep sending my way and am glad you're enjoying this version of General Grievous. Thank Grievous himself if he pleases you. I find him such an extraordinarily vivid character that my only real writing concern is to try and find adequate words to describe him as he trots about doing his thing in the transdimensional closet in my mind. I really hope you like him in this chapter. He kind of took over for a bit and it didn't come out anything like I'd originally intended. This looks to be a lengthy story and it'll be a good while yet before Grievous even begins to suspect that he's been manipulated. I still have to get Dooku back (next chapter) to unwittingly set that end of it in motion and…well, hopefully, it'll all make sense when you eventually read it. As for Lissa and pals, a few more details about their backgrounds should soon reveal themselves (such as her age). Don't forget that this story's still wide open for plotting ideas. If there's anyone in particular you'd like to see Grievous have a run-in with or something special you'd like to see him do, suggest away!

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 4 – A Special Way Of Going

General Grievous was hunting.

He ran hunched in a partial stoop, legs pumping rhythmically with controlled and endless energy. His eyes glittered as they scanned ahead. His every sensor was on highest alert. With his long powerful limbs, sleek narrow head, and bony-appearing frame, he looked a little like a giant coursing hound on the move, idling still as he loped along, yet ready to uncoil and explode into violent action the instant he spotted his prey. A turn in the corridor came up and Grievous slowed into his smooth running walk. His head lowered further and twisted about. It wasn't spoor that he sought, he was listening for voices. The prey he was hunting was Jedi.

Grievous hated all Jedi with a singular blinding passion that sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. In their capacity as the enforcers of the Republic, the Jedi had once brought sanctions and famine to his world, for which he'd never forgiven them. Later, they'd targeted him too and almost succeeded in tearing him apart, and Grievous thought it a prime, deserved irony that in their attempt to assassinate him, they'd only sown the seeds of their own destruction. Dooku had been correct—it was indeed Grievous's duty to provide leadership and win battles for the Confederacy. That was his primary function. But he also had a secondary duty, one which Grievous himself had eagerly sanctioned. He'd been designed, built and trained specifically to kill Jedi.

Count Dooku himself had provided the training. Years ago, the elegant old wolf had trod the halls of the Jedi Temple as a respected Jedi Master, but the Order had proved far too limiting for his boundless skills and ambitions. He'd turned to the arcane teachings of the Dark Side instead and found the power he sought at the side of Lord Sidious, his Dark Master, and a new name and role as the apprentice Darth Tyranus. It was more properly Tyranus, the Sith Lord, not the former Jedi, who'd taught Grievous the arts of fighting with the Jedi's own favoured weapon. And it was Tyranus who had tried, and failed, to ignite the Dark Side of the Force within his alien cyborg student.

Grievous still had no sensitivity to the Force. He didn't care. The Sith Lords and Jedi could keep their Force. Grievous had his near-indestructible droid components and his enhanced natural talents and his hatred and his lust to kill.

It was a strange paradox that it was only during his hunting expeditions that Grievous ever took fierce honest pride in the machine body that now housed him, the only time that he ever felt fully alive…

The low crumping sound of a distant barrage came to Grievous in the corridor—his troops outside the office building, cleaning up the last pockets of resistance in the Damerung city. The cyborg's sense of hearing was largely artificial, which gave him the option of adjusting it to a considerable degree. He did that now, tuning out the low bass sounds of battle, upping his volume sensitivity, listening for the common frequencies and patterns of speech. His body became absolutely still and locked in place, face thrust forward and sweeping very slowly from side to side with eerie, mechanized precision as he utilized the sensor panels attached to either side of his skull.

There! Just a few words, but words nonetheless, still so faint that they were barely detectable. Grievous fixed a bearing on the sound's direction, reset his hearing to its usual parameters, and unlocked his body. He began to run again with fluid grace, much faster than before. Part of the building had been bombed and was in ruins, the floors torn open here and there, the hallways part-blocked with piles of debris. None of it mattered, none of it stopped him. His big grasping feet could seize and propel him over any terrain, even up and down walls, if need be, and he could leap and scramble with all fours as adroitly as he could run.

It only took him a few minutes more to locate the Jedi in a subbasement level and there were three of them, two good-sized males and a much smaller female, all humanoid in form. As soon as they saw him, one of the men began coming forward, already drawing his lightsaber, and the other two shrank back. Grievous thought it likely that he had a hero on his hands, some fool willing to try and engage him alone in a misguided attempt to buy the others time.

"Going somewhere?" Grievous remarked as he came up, striding upright at full height. The Jedi who wanted to fight him was a Vurk, he saw now, a tall creature as well, but a lot of that was just a sweeping head crest. The Vurk took up a stance in the middle of the floor space, blocking the cyborg's way.

"It stops here, Grievous," he said.

The General blinked, surprised. "You know me?"

"We all know you. Butcher."

So. He already had a reputation. Excellent. Grievous kept his gaze fixed on the Vurk while he swung his body through a lithesome arc, into position. He reached slowly to his waist and removed two of the lightsabers affixed there and ignited them. "Which shall it be?" he said conversationally. "Red or blue? I give you the choice of the instrument of your death." The Jedi said nothing, merely looked disdainful. "The blue then," Grievous decided. "It'll go so well with your blood."

They clashed, by mutual consent, seconds later, and it only took seconds more for Grievous to determine that the Vurk was a purely defensive fighter. Easily beatable, in other words. He went to work with a single weapon.

Precision, speed, power—those were the catchwords that best described the cyborg's style as he danced about his opponent with his lightsaber humming, his processors softly whirring as they moved his heavy body through its perfect simulation of supple life. It was only the Jedi's precognitive use of the Force that made them equal for a time. Grievous could strike faster than the human eye could follow, dart and flex in ways no living being could. He had other advantages, too, but didn't feel the need for them for this duello. He knew that he could wear the Vurk down with little more effort than he'd expend in a simple workout.

The Jedi began to grow weary. He was a good fighter, stolid and brave, but had never met anyone who attacked with such relentless aggression. It took all his skill and concentration to parry the cyborg's attacks and in the back of his mind was the knowledge that Grievous could wield several weapons simultaneously, a demoralizing notion. The Jedi's sides began heaving in and out with exhaustion and his broad mouth gaped as he gasped for breath. His spirit was still willing, and his loyalty true, but there was only so much that Vurk flesh and blood could do against an opponent who never tired and whose every blow was so crushingly strong.

They looked each other in the eye and Grievous saw that the Vurk was already contemplating defeat and that the match was over. The cyborg reactivated his second lightsaber and got serious. Two more strikes, a third, and already he'd knocked the Jedi's weapon out of his tired failing hand. He put the other lightsaber straight through the Vurk's heart, a decent death for an adversary who'd tried, and took to his durasteel heels to hunt down the rest of his prey before the Jedi's body even finished twitching.

The two remaining Jedi had disappeared from sight early on during the duel, but Grievous had no trouble locating them again. One of them was leaving a blood trail.

They'd managed to get down into an even lower level and were trying to recoup in one of the big rooms containing some of the giant machines that serviced the building. Grievous spotted them in a wan well of illumination thrown by emergency lighting, the woman kneeling and the man standing immediately before her and leaning down on her slightly; a pair of humans, or close enough. They both straightened up again as soon as they saw the cyborg's skeletal figure emerging out of the gloom, the yellow eyes glowing like lit coal, the crimson spear of the lightsaber igniting.

To his surprise, the woman came at him at once and alone. It seemed to be his day for encountering heroes. But this one, unlike the Vurk, wasn't worth his while. Grievous perceived at once that she was young and inexperienced and slashed her contemptuously aside with but a half-dozen strokes. It was the man he was after, the older Jedi, the one that could make it a contest between them.

The human had backed into a sort of deep alcove between two air handling units and was leaning against the wall. He was the injured one that had been dripping blood. Grievous could see it saturating one trouser leg above the man's left knee and running down the boot beneath and puddling on the floor.

"Come out, Jedi," he called. "Face me!"

"I'm not making it that easy for you, Grievous," the man replied. "Why don't you come in here and let a real warrior show you how it's done?"

Grievous made a sound midway between a snort of disgust and a low growl. Go into that crevice to dig the scum out like so much vermin? Hardly! He began to stalk from one side to the other before the opening to the alcove, glaring in at the man, getting mad, needing to move to contain his rising furore. The Jedi watched him, a little disappointed. He'd hoped to lure the big cyborg into the confined space to try and stab him through one eye and on into his brain; it was the only vulnerable spot he could see on the armoured body. But that wasn't going to happen now. He could tell that Grievous would rather take the air handlers apart to get at him than squeeze in after him, and he was getting so weak, too weak to even defend himself against the maddened creature much longer.

"Jedi filth. Coward!" Grievous taunted as he paced back and forth. "Is this what you learnt at the Temple, to cower in corners? To run and hide when confronted by superiority?"

From the alcove against the wall, the cornered Jedi looked out at his death raging before him and prepared himself. His eyes shone with quiet courage and devotion and pain and an immense sorrow that it had come to this, that the galaxy was tearing itself apart and for what?; even a flash of brief pity for the twisted meld of flesh and metal that the enemy had sent against him. General Grievous saw none of it. He was too furious because the Jedi would not come out and fight him.

At last he went to the body of the woman he'd slain and put a foot over her head. With great deliberation, making sure that the Jedi saw everything he did, he clenched his metal talons tight and began to lift.

"Stop that!" the man exclaimed.

Grievous crouched lower over the torn corpse and the face he showed the Jedi was pure evil.

"Your padawan, was she?" he sneered. "Pity you weren't a better teacher."

With a cry of hurt revulsion, the man rushed out and Grievous leapt gleefully forward to meet him. But it wasn't the fight he'd been hoping for. The Jedi was far more seriously injured than he'd thought and staggered, wounded leg threatening to buckle, every time he turned to his left; a worthless opponent. Grievous, disgusted and angered anew, cut the man down in a trice, then needlessly swung again, dismembering the body as it fell. It helped assuage his rage a little.

Once he'd calmed down, Grievous retraced his steps to collect the lightsabers from all three of the Jedi he'd just killed. The Vurk's weapon had an unusual hilt that seemed partially inlaid with petrified wood. The cyborg turned it over and over as he inspected it, pleased by its uniqueness and its heft and feel. It would make a fine trophy.

He forced his way through the wreckage of the building's damaged north face and soon rejoined the droid troops mustering in the convenient open space of one of city's parks. His officers had little more to add to what they'd told him before he'd gone off to hunt the Jedi. The city was now theirs, its officials taken captive, and all military resistance planet-wide had been quelled. Grievous's job, as he saw it, was now over. All that was left was to wait for the civilians to start arriving and turn over the occupied world's policing and control, and what became of Damerung after that didn't much interest him. His understanding was that it would become a Techno Union holding, though.

Grievous shuttled back up to his command ship feeling unsatisfied. The inhabitants of Damerung hadn't put up much of a fight and it hadn't been much of a campaign. The Republic evidently didn't value the planet overly and had sent very few forces, and the only Jedi commanders they'd managed to locate and isolate in the end had provided Grievous with only mediocre sport at best. If this was an example of the sort of rabble he'd be facing in the future, he ought to be able to slice his way into the very heart of Republic space in next to no time.

Count Dooku was still busy with his own affairs at Brentaal IV and Mirgoshir and unavailable to take Grievous's briefing on the battle's conclusion. The General left a message summarizing events instead. Reviewing operational reports kept him occupied for a while after that, but Grievous was frankly already bored with the whole subject of Damerung. He needed a new world to subjugate, a fresh challenge! Unfortunately, Dooku's future plans were evidently dependent to some degree on the outcome at Brentaal IV, and he'd been unwilling to discuss possible alternatives with Grievous, leaving him in limbo.

Grievous ran over a list of topics and projects that he kept on the backburners in his mind—potential busywork, for when he needed a change of pace. The Marku woman's name popped up. Ah yes, those files she'd refused to open. She'd never know how close he'd come to killing her for trying to protect her data or that she owed her life to a garbled incoming transmission received at just the right distracting moment. He turned to his computer, accessing the requisite information.

To his incredible annoyance, he discovered that his people still hadn't gotten the secure files open. He couldn't believe it. A whole department at his disposal and they hadn't managed to crack a couple of simple codes devised by a human female. This was ridiculous! And since he had time to spare and was in such a bloody-minded state anyway, he decided all at once to fix the problem himself.

Back to his shuttle and over to the droid tender. Grievous had turned the human over to Nagas the Patriot, the Geonosian leader of the biodroid and heuristics science team aboard the tender, with instructions that Nagas was to employ her as he saw fit and get what use he could out of her. He hadn't thought about her since and imagined that the Geonosians had put her to work slaving away in some lab.

He found her nowhere near a lab. She was sitting relaxing in one of the civilians' lounges with Nagas himself and several of the other scientists. And to Grievous's now extreme annoyance, she still had two of her droids with her, the small brown one standing in her lap and looking up at her face and patting her cheeks with its little hands, and the big, long-bodied, bronze-coloured one lying with its six legs folded up beneath it on the floor beside her chair like some insectile pet. All of her unnecessary equipment and droids and vehicles were supposed to have been confiscated, but Grievous, with his unique insight into the logical stupidity of droid thinking, thought he knew what had happened. The battle droids in charge had been unable to classify the two custom jobs and had been incapable of proceeding with the sequence of confiscation without completing the step of classification. Either that or the woman had somehow talked her way into keeping the droids, an even more irritating prospect.

The Geonosians had all turned their snouts in his direction with calm curiosity as soon as he came into the lounge, and after a pause, Grievous afforded them a curt nod. If it hadn't been for them, he'd've long ago died or gone insane in a bacta tank. To the woman, he simply made a beckoning gesture before turning and walking out again. As soon as he had her alone out in the corridor, he spun and began advancing on her.

Lissa resignedly let him back her up against the wall. Did everything with him have to do with force and intimidation? Couldn't he just have a nice, normal conversation for once?

"What can I do for you? General Grievous."

"Ah. You've educated yourself," the General replied, tone sarcastic. He put his face down far too close to her own so that once again her field of vision was dominated by his bone-white mask and glittery, yellow-gold eyes. "Are you enjoying your new position?"

"Actually, yes I am," Lissa answered, sounding surprised herself. "I've always wanted to work with the Geonosians."

"Perhaps I should charge you a job-finder's fee."

"I don't like the job that much."

They stared at each other, the cyborg expressionless, the human toying with a feeble grin she didn't quite dare express.

"Or perhaps you would do me a small courtesy in exchange," Grievous went on. "A matter of releasing certain files, for instance."

She looked puzzled for a moment, then said, "Oh. Those old things."

"Yes. Those old things," he repeated, ominously.

Lissa was now regarding the alien commander with some dismay. "General, those files, they're…confidental. It's just private research I'd hoped to patent and sell someday, for commercial use. It has no military applications at all."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"I absolutely promise that you'd find it all a waste of time. Wouldn't you rather think about more important things? Like improving your failsafe features?"

"My what!" He looked about to hit her, instantly infuriated by her presumption and reference to the humiliating incident on Marku. Lissa scrambled to deflect his outrage.

"I—I spoke to the Geonosians about what happened," she stuttered, "and they explained it a little, what they've installed and, um, programmed, and—and the parameters they're using. And frankly, General, it could be better. You ought to have a two-tier system of failsafes."

"Two-tier," he echoed flatly, glaring at her.

"Well, yes. It's quite possible, for example, that a simple filter could've saved you conk—, er, being in the state you were in when I first saw you. A filter designed for your breathing aperture, I mean, set to deploy in a compromised atmosphere."

"Deploy," repeated Grievous, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Have you done military work before?"

"Er, some," she admitted.

"For the Republic?"

"Oh, just—contracts here and there. I can't talk much about it. You know."

Grievous did know and he was getting pretty steamed. But he also wanted to know more about the failsafes. Slowly, he straightened up and said, "Continue."

Lissa felt much more confident without his standing stooped over her and breathing in her face. Her voice became more animated and she began using her hands the way she was wont to when in full spiel. "There's another thing," she said. "Think of what might happen if you ever had to ditch into water. Your body is so heavy. You can't swim or depend on the usual flotation devices."

"My chest is pressurized. I can survive without breathing for several minutes."

"But if you sank, General!" And now her tone was just as ominous as his own had been. "The failsafe you have now would kick you into torpor and protect you for a while, an hour, say, but after that you'd start to suffocate, unconscious or not. Lying on the bottom."

She made a stabbing motion towards the floor with one forefinger as she finished her words and Grievous's own fingers twitched on the edge of his cape, subconsciously pulling it a little closer. Choking to death while unaware would be a terrible way for a warrior to die. And the scenario was not implausible; the shuttle crash that had almost killed him had been over water and it was only by pure good fortune that his smashed body had been recovered before he'd drowned. Grievous most assuredly never wanted to risk drowning again.

"Nagas never said anything about any of this," he said slowly.

"Well, he wouldn't, would he? Geonosis has so little standing water that the hazards of ditching wouldn't even occur to most Geonosians. It's not a usual danger for them, drowning, except maybe in one of their flash floods. They just don't think about it."

"I presume they do now since you've already discussed this with them."

"I have," Lissa confirmed, "and we agree that you should definitely have some sort of rebreather, just in case. There are already several good models available that could be adapted. Even the Jedi use them as part of their standard kit, a pretty good one, too."

Do they now, thought Grievous. A pity he hadn't known that earlier, when he'd retrieved the lightsabers. He looked down at the eager emotion suffusing the woman's face and felt a sudden vague discomfit without exactly knowing why, but the feeling passed as quickly as it had arrived. He considered what she'd said instead, mulling it all over briefly.

"Tell Nagas to write up what you've discussed as a proposal," he decided. "He knows the routine."

"Already done, sir," she informed him. "He was going to submit it tomorrow."

"Fine. I'll make my decision reference any upgrades after I read it. You may go."

"Thank you, General!"

She took off like a shot and again Grievous felt a brief uneasiness, but couldn't place its cause. He walked off, at a slow pace for once, hunched, letting his cloak fall forward to envelope him. So his little salvage project had worked for the military, had she? That would explain certain things, her ready servility for one. But background intelligence would have to take a good close look at her now. And if Grievous sensed even a hint of duplicity in her, the slightest intimation that she was concealing information that could be valuable to the Separatists, he swore he would force it out of her with his own bare hands.

Thinking about security checks tweaked his memory at last and brought him to a sudden crashing halt.

BLAST the wretched woman! She'd completely distracted him from the matter of the secure files!

TBC


	5. Design Flaws

This is a bit of a weird science chapter. Just a little warning for those of you who are squeamish or would just as soon not think about certain aspects of Grievous's being…

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 5 – Design Flaws

General Grievous never troubled Lissa again about her secure files and for that she was supremely grateful. After a week, she thought it worth a try to make a few timid inquiries about recovering them, doing her best to make it all sound very casual and of no great importance, and Nagas, whose blasé disregard for all matters cryptic would have made a security officer cry, said that he'd see what he could do. A few days later, he got her files back for her. Lissa was amazed to find all her data still intact and undamaged. She'd been almost sure that Grievous would have ordered it destroyed out of sheer malicious spite. After thinking it over, she decided that he must have accepted her reassurances after all, resecured the files, and never said another word about them to anyone from then on.

In the meantime, there was her new life aboard the droid tender to get used to. Geonosians comprised the bulk of the living contingent aboard the vessel, enough of them that almost all of the various Aristocrat classes were represented, as well as a host of the more common drone castes, almost a mini-hive colony in itself. There were also a few other alien teams from Separatist worlds she was unfamiliar with, and the ship itself was manned by a mixed crew of Muuns, Neimoidians and droids. Lissa was the only human in residence. She couldn't have been more of a minority if she'd tried.

Lissa found herself rather liking the Geonosians. They were quite the mad little scientists, their morality appalling by human standards, yet hardly unexpected since they treated their own selves with the same callous disregard. It was rare for any of them to be cared for when they become sick or badly injured, they were just disposed of, and the drones were even more expendable, gotten rid of sometimes on an Aristocrat's mere dissatisfaction or whim alone. Geonosians had a reputation for being xenophobes, but Lissa's experience was that shared interests had a way of overcoming prejudices and it was no different this time. It also helped that they seemed to find the very notion of their prize creation, Grievous, catching her and making her serve him utterly hilarious, and whenever she told them about her kidnapping and got to the part about the General blowing up Marku's moon out of pure meanness just to make a point, they'd just about fall off their chairs shrieking with creaking laughter. Lissa still didn't get it, it seemed to be some cultural thing, but was more than happy to be the butt of their jokes if it meant they'd accept her more easily.

She was delighted to learn that Nagas and one of his Citizen underlings, Attenbro, had both had a personal hand in designing and building Grievous back on Geonosis. They told her a little about it, answering all her questions, and seemed pleased by her professional interest in their work. In turn, they openly admired her droids, Trigger and Gregory, especially after she installed the new language packs that made them instantly fluent in Geonosian, and were quite tolerant of having them around and letting them assist her, treating them for the most part with the same lackadaisical latitude that they extended to their drones. Trigger still did most of the muscle work for Lissa and Gregory found a new calling in becoming her personal translator, hovering about and pompously calling out the occasional technical terms that her own more limited translating headset couldn't handle. All the Geonosians she got to know understood Basic and several of them spoke it decently enough, albeit with weirdly slurred, strongly guttural accents, so they all got on quite well together.

General Grievous decided to undergo all the upgrades they'd recommended, and Nagas, who was enjoying the novelty of being able to discuss important matters with a female (those of his own species being as dumb as drones) and who'd taken quite the shine to Lissa as a result, gave her permission to observe the procedure. Lissa was a tad leery of Grievous's possible reaction at seeing her again, but needn't have worried. All he did when he eventually showed up on his scheduled appointment day was fire a single poisonous glance her way, which made her start guiltily despite herself, then ignore her. Lissa heaved a silent sigh of relief and made a point after that of remaining in the background and out of the cyborg's line of sight, although she insisted on lurking close enough to see all that was going on.

The Geonosians found it easiest to get at Grievous's interior while he was seated in an oversized reclining chair whose general make and operation would, in another universe, have no doubt reminded many people of adventures in dentistry. They flicked on a battery of lights and a sterile field, positioned a couple of carts laden with equipment and parts, and got to work.

The first part of the procedure was purely mechanical, the installing of the chemical filter and rebreather adjacent to the cyborg's breathing aperture hidden amongst the structures that moved and supported his head. They accessed the aperture by first disconnecting the frontal neck struts that functioned in place of the usual humanoid sternomastoid muscles, then turning Grievous's face to one side and tilting the headrest of the chair back as far as it would go, which made the cyborg look as though he were painfully broken-necked even though he technically had no neck to break. Off with the coarse filter already in place to guard against dust and debris, and out with the entire long structure that connected directly with what remained of his respiratory organs. Lissa felt a bit squirmy as she watched the Geonosians pull the thick tube out and wondered what the sensation must be like for Grievous, but then realized that no, of course he wouldn't feel a thing because they were leaving the outer sleeve of the unit in place, it was just the inner portion that they were temporarily removing.

Nagas the Patriot brought the breathing tube over to Lissa for her to examine while the rest of his team carried on. He knew that she was very interested in knowing how they'd managed to create the cyborg's life-like synthetic voice and took considerable pride in showing her the neat trick they'd come up with, the insertion low down in the tube of a little artificial larynx which Grievous operated with his own breathing and which transmitted its vibrational data to the droid vocabulator embedded in his faceplate for processing and integration. The dual system offered Grievous two things no mere droid voice programme alone could yet replicate; the enhancement made by his sniffs, huffs, disdainful snorts and all the other little non-verbal sounds that only a living, breathing organism could generate, and the ability to instantly adjust the volume of his voice from purring whisper to angry roar, not that Lissa had heard him shout yet or ever wanted to, but it was pretty easy for her to imagine that hoarse voice of his raised in a mighty bellow. A neat trick indeed, she thought, although privately she felt a bit disappointed. She'd been hoping to discover a way of giving Gregory the ability to moderate his own rather querulous voice, since, as things currently stood, the little rascal wouldn't know a whisper if it leapt up and bit him in his plushy hinder.

The Geonosians finished with their installation and reconnected the cyborg's neck struts, and prepared for the next portion of his refit, updating the hard-wired programming to operate the new devices. For this, it was easiest to access his brain directly, and Lissa couldn't help but creep a little closer, very keen now to see what was under that elegant alien mask. She already had a pretty good idea of what to expect thanks to her secret scans made back on Marku, but there was nothing quite like seeing such things for oneself!

The faceplate came off first, undone with a few deft turns of what looked incongruously like an ordinary flathead screwdriver that Nagas inserted beneath the flared portion of the mask at the top and bottom. There wasn't much of the alien face left to cover, as it turned out. All that remained was a roughly rectangular section encompassing his eyes, which'd been carefully dissected out complete with all the external skin, tissue and glands left in place and the bony structure beneath left intact to provide attachment for all the delicate sheets of muscle that worked his lids and brows. It rested inside a receptacle lined with synthflesh and carefully shaped to fit snugly against the faceplate and slot neatly into the front of the purely artificial skull that housed his brain.

A second plate recessed into the skull and abutting the facial receptacle and which'd been hidden by the backward sweeping top of the faceplate proved removable in much the same way. Out came Nagas's trusty screwdriver again, to hook into a pair of small sunken slots and lift the plate up. Lissa leaned in, most intrigued. It was an alien brain all right, more narrowly structured and more highly arched than any human brain, and with an intriguing pronounced extra cleft running down either side, yet there were similarities too, enough to suggest some kinship between their species, human and Kalee, in the ways they thought and processed information. The implants were extensive, far more elaborate than anything Lissa had ever seen before, concentrated on the right hemisphere. She couldn't begin to make sense of those just on sight.

Nagas decided to do a little routine organic maintenance while they had Grievous on the figurative table and turned the leadership of the remainder of the procedure over to his colleague Attenbro. The Patriot chatted softly with Lissa in his heavily accented Basic as he worked at the less demanding task of looking for any worrisome areas of inflammation or infection, and inspected all the places where the implants cut into the tissues. He pointed out a few markers as he went, the part of the brain responsible for bodily coordination, which they'd upgraded; another portion that dealt with spatial awareness and pattern recognition, which they'd so far left alone. Occasionally, he'd find a little tab or spot of something he didn't like the look of and would just summarily snip it away or abrade it off. Lissa again got a little fidgety—this was Grievous's brain after all, the seat of his being, that Nagas was so casually nipping away at. She glanced at the Kalee's reduced face, wondering how he felt about what was going on, but he was simply sitting as he had throughout the entire upgrade thus far, stoic and unmoving and with his eyes either closed or partially open with a distant, unfocused expression in them. Probably trying to pretend none of it was even happening, she thought, and felt a hint of sympathy for him. It was the way she'd likely try to cope if she were in his place.

There was a little necrosis at the extreme lower right edge of what remained of the General's face. Nagas expertly lasered away the dead tissue and popped in a piece of synthflesh in its place. Another tiny bit of him gone. It was an ongoing problem, Nagas explained; the blood flow at the outer edges wasn't the best. Sometimes his flesh would regrow to fill in the space, sometimes not. The implants in his eyes also tended to irritate them from time to time, making them weep a little thick matter for a day or two, but that seemed a self-limiting problem which didn't interfere with his vision, so Nagas was disregarding it for now.

The Geonosians worked on Grievous as though he were a piece of meat. Not that they were ever known for their bedside manners, but their cavalier attitude finally bothered Lissa enough that, while they were resealing his skull plate, she went around in front of their patient to speak to him.

"General Grievous? How are you doing?"

His closed eyes snapped open and he actually appeared startled. After a moment, he managed a sort of slow deliberate blink by way of acknowledgement, then closed his eyes again, shutting her out. Talking to him was evidently not part of the routine. Lissa left him alone after that, although she was glad she'd made the effort.

When everything was done, Grievous left without saying a word or looking at anyone, and the Geonosians said nothing to him. Lissa gazed after him thoughtfully, wondering when he'd be in again and whether she'd ever get a peek inside his chest.

As it turned out, she got to see him again much sooner than anyone could have predicted. A few days later, while securing a world named Shartil, General Grievous came to grief.

It went wrong for him right from the start. Shartil was a peaceful, agrarian world in the middle of nowhere, its humanoid inhabitants immersed in cultural pursuits and matters of art and philosophy rather than in fighting invaders. The only reason Grievous was tasked to take the world at all was because of its strategic importance as the only planet within an entire vast sector endowed with a temperate climate and an atmosphere hospitable for most of the species loyal to the Confederacy, a potential way station, in short, for Separatist troops to put down on or use as a gathering and assembly point. Shartil offered not a wit of resistance when Grievous's armies first showed up and conquering the Shartilli turned out to be as simple as shuttling down and telling them that they were now under the protective umbrella of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Or tried to tell them—they had some sort of ridiculous rule by committee government in place and seemed unable to decide on who should represent them when Grievous demanded that the planetary leaders be brought before him after he landed in what passed as their most noteworthy capital city.

He waited, fretting, by a beautiful conservatory in the garden courtyard attached to a ludicrously over-embellished public building, almost a palace. He'd brought his whole entourage, a troop of battle droids, a dozen of his elite MagnaGuard droids, even a squad apiece of droidekas and super battle droids, and the longer he had to stand there and endure the placid, stupid faces of the Shartilli that kept cringing up to him, pleading with him to wait just a little while longer, please, they'd almost decided, the angrier he got and the more useless the whole show seemed to him, for how could such snivelling cowards even distinguish between a truly magnificent display of force and a simple kick to the backside? To add to his aggravation, one of his newest MagnaGuards, a grey model he'd just finished training up himself not four days ago, suddenly up and keeled over on him, crashing down with not a sputter or hitch of warning. It wasn't the first time it'd happened, either—a different grey had gone down in just the same unexpected way only a week ago. Grievous just about hit the ionosphere. He was so peeved that he called up and personally ordered Nagas to send down a team to get the problem fixed NOW or send the lot of the unreliable new models straight back to Holowan Mechanicals, one or the other.

Grievous strode off by himself to try and calm down. He stalked through the conservatory greenhouse, down all its paths and past the magnificent collections, the rare exotics, the twinkling fountains, unseeing and furious, frustrated by his mission and Shartil itself, which wouldn't fight him. He stood for a while by a gushing waterfall that dewed his ceramic duranium face and found no comfort, and took to his feet again to do it all over, needing to move. Gradually, some of his emotion and aggression bled away and he was able to return to the entrance of the conservatory in a more reasonable state of mind. It helped that Nagas's team had already arrived and were diligently working on the MagnaGuard, which'd been discreetly dragged off to the far side of the courtyard. Grievous watched them for a moment, noting that they'd brought the human with them and that she seemed to be doing her share. One positive thing, that. They were getting their use out of her. Then he looked again at the opulent public building beyond and felt a fresh wave of embittered scorn that people could live like this while Kaleesh had starved.

A pair of battle droids escorted up another cowering Shartilli, this one clad in voluminous robes and wearing a tall conical hat. "President Vesperanimin, sir," one of the droids announced.

"At last!" Grievous exclaimed, and stepped forward.

A shattering explosion ripped through the peace and beauty of the alien courtyard.

Grievous lay under the rubble of the destroyed greenhouse stunned with shock. Two thoughts had leapt almost instantly into his mind as soon as the percussive ringing of the blast had faded and were now chasing themselves round and round; the first, suicide bomber, the second, how dare they? How DARE they!

His limbs convulsed and he burst out of the wreckage, wild with rage, and stood seething as he took stock. The conservatory had been totally demolished. Pieces of his battle droid troop lay scattered everywhere, the super battle droids and droidekas had all been felled, even two of his MagnaGuards were down, with several others clearly damaged. Droids that had been outside the immediate blast radius and mostly unaffected were already moving in to assist him and he could see members of the Geonosian team in the backdrop getting slowly back up on their feet, dusting one another off, taking stock themselves.

Grievous hopped down off the debris pile into a clear area. "Get the council members!" he bawled at the approaching droids. "All of them, every one! I'll teach them to—"

Abruptly, he staggered sideways.

Grievous looked down at himself, shocked anew. He couldn't see a thing wrong with his legs. They'd just worked fine, carrying him nimbly off the wreckage. He cocked his head up and looked about, confused. He was supposed to be virtually indestructible!

His balance went again and this time he lurched right into one of the damaged MagnaGuards. All his power seemed to be draining right out of him. He began shuddering violently as he fought for control of his body, sinking down, his leg joints folding up.

The droids that had reached him stood about his awkwardly sitting form in a loose circle, at an utter loss. And now something worse was happening. He couldn't breathe properly anymore. His lungs felt on fire and ready to explode. Grievous tipped slowly over to one side as he gulped and coughed weakly, sprawling down onto the ground, unable to do a thing to prevent it.

A forest of droid legs and feet filled his field of vision. Then he saw the grasping toe-claws of Geonosian feet, a pair of black service boots. Yes, the scientists would help. They were alive and could think, could figure out what was wrong with him, not like his blasted stupid droids that were still just standing about like great metal lumps.

He lay there miserably while the Geonosians clicked and chirruped urgently to one another. He felt a soft touch on his body, the human's hand, reaching in under his chest plating and sliding over his synthskin until it rested directly over his crazily hammering heart. Dimly, he made out that all the aliens were arguing, or maybe just disputing, then came a few terse orders issued at the droids.

Several of the closest battle droids grabbed hold of Grievous and began to drag him. He tolerated it at first, but as soon as they began lifting him, he began to fight instinctively, lashing out spasmodically with no real control, limbs thrashing, sending the droids flying in all directions. Someone started to yell at him.

"General Grievous! General Grievous! Stop it! You have to stop and let us help you. Please!"

Female. The human's voice. He rolled his eyes, trying to see her, unable to move his head.

"Here. I'm right here," Lissa said, and now he could see her, squatting down close to him, looking into his face. "General, we have to lift you up and get your head down. I know it's terribly undignified for you, but it's very important that we do so. Will you let us? Let us try to help you?"

His desperate struggle to breathe overrode any verbal reply. He gave her permission with the pleading and honest fright in his eyes, the way his body went limp again.

A snatch of long-ago memory came to Grievous as the droids seized him and began pulling him over the ground again, himself lying bleeding and gasping on a battlefield as his elite swarmed around him. He closed his eyes and did what he'd done then, concentrate on trying to remain alive while his people raced to save him.

The droids, under direction, draped his body over a beam projecting several feet above ground out of some of the bomb blast rubble, his hip joints uppermost and head and arms trailing on the ground. His face was in the dirt at first until someone pulled his arms out straight and shifted his head into a better position. Then came a long period during which he could feel a good deal of manipulation going on with the flexible cage of durasteel hoops that his chest nested into and then a very strange sensation of cold within, which quickly dissipated. A more pleasant sensation soon followed, Lissa's hand resting warmly on the synthskin above his heart again.

"How are you feeling, General?"

"Better," he croaked.

It was true. His breathing and the sense that there was something terribly wrong inside him had eased almost as soon as they'd upended him over the beam. He shifted his uppermost arm a little and clenched his fingers and to his great relief, found that he'd regained control of his body, at least a little.

"Try not to move your legs at all," Lissa said to him. Her blue-grey eyes were very bright and her cheeks flushed with high colour, Grievous saw, as he looked at her. "You'll be all right now, I think. We caught it in time," she continued softly, smiling back. "You ruptured your gutsack, I'm afraid, General, and lost a lot of fluid. It disrupted almost everything for a while. We're making do with universal plasma from a battle pack for now and added enough to get you stable again, and should soon have you taped up well enough to transport you."

Ah. So that was it. Not his life-blood draining out of him this time perhaps, but life-sustaining nonetheless, the doctored bacta fluid that bathed his organs and kept his chest pressurized. He lifted his head a little and could see that the Geonosians were closing up the hole in him with emergency wound tape, and was suddenly happy enough to still be alive that he could feel a certain wry relief that they weren't using duct tape.

He wasn't so happy later when told that he'd have to remain in a bacta tank for two days to properly flush and cleanse his organic components and ward off any problems induced by his near respiratory collapse. The Geonosians had used a piece of pipe torn up by the bomb blast to pour the plasma into him fast during their makeshift field operation and it hadn't exactly been sterile.

Lissa wasn't very happy either. Her colleagues left her in charge of Grievous while they saw to the matter of redesigning the durasteel cage armour that had proven just a little too flexible to protect him properly under all circumstances. Not that she minded the opportunity to learn more about him, exactly, it was just that the sudden, unexpected responsibility in of itself dismayed her—she couldn't even bring herself to imagine the horrible repercussions should he come to any harm, or heaven forbid, actually die while in her care. But of course he didn't die, he just got cranky because he didn't like being kept in the bacta tank. He was also still very bitter over what had happened to him and was soon demanding explanations she couldn't always provide.

"I was told the synthskin housing my organs was impenetrable," he complained at one point. "Why did it rupture?"

"It's impact-proof," Lissa said, "but not, it seems, as tear-resistant as was hoped."

"I don't understand."

She just looked at him. And because he was being a pain and because she still had unpleasant memories of how he liked to stage practical demonstrations, decided to stage a demonstration of her own.

Lissa put her padd down on the deck and rolled one sleeve up and held up her arm. "Human skin," she said to him. She gave her bare forearm a whack with the back of her other hand. "Impact-proof enough that I'd probably have to break the bone before a blow would split or cut the skin." She held up a pinky and wiggled it. "We don't have much in the way of nails, and they're relatively soft. But if that nail were ragged or in any way rough and caught my skin just so? It could tear a real nasty little scratch into it. If I caught my skin on something harder, a snag on plastic or metal, anything like that, it could rip wide open."

"All right. Fine," Grievous muttered.

"We'll never know exactly what caused your rupture, but it was likely a sliver of the greenhouse sheeting or maybe a tiny bit of framing, sliding along between your hoops and tearing you up when the explosion threw you against some debris in an arched position. If you'd hit with your body straighter and everything overlapping the way it was supposed to, it never would have happened."

But Grievous had lapsed into a sullen silence and no longer wanted to talk.

It was during one of these sullen, cranky, quiet periods, with the cyborg brooding in his tank and the human standing before him and scowling over her scanner padd as she struggled to make sense of all the information she'd suddenly had dumped on her, that Count Dooku arrived out of the starry blue to visit with Grievous.

"Our good General must have been touched with unusual luck and foresight when he recruited you," the Count remarked as he came up to Lissa. "You are Miss Veleroko, I presume."

Lissa barely registered the man's presence, being far too absorbed by the comparative readings on her padd, which just weren't willing to settle down into anything approaching normal, not at all. "Yeah," she acknowledged.

One of Dooku's eyebrows arched upward. "And how is my droid commander?" he asked, his tone cooler.

"Cyborg," Lissa said shortly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"General Grievous is a cyborg. I don't put droids in bacta tanks."

"And I am not used to being addressed in such a perfunctory manner."

Belatedly, Lissa realized that once again she'd been guilty of keeping her nose stuck in her work when she really ought to have been paying attention to the bigger world around her. She put her padd down and turned to face Dooku.

"I am sorry, sir," she apologized. "Given my background, I'm afraid I tend to become overzealous about terminology."

"That's quite all right, my dear. I'm sure the General is a fascinating subject."

"You must be Count Dooku. What can I do for you, sir?" she went on, pleased that this Dooku—who was Grievous's superior, she reminded herself—was already revealing himself to be a decent sort willing to forgive her blunder. Nice-looking man, too, tall, impeccably clad and groomed, his white hair and beard contrasting appealingly with his glossy dark eyes; old enough to be her father and then some, surely, yet he had about him the ease and vigour of a much younger man. Lissa's gaze became laced with considerable interest as she attentively continued looking at him.

"How is General Grievous?" the Count inquired politely.

"Well, you can ask him yourself. He's perfectly alert and aware."

"I'm asking you."

Lissa blinked. "He said earlier that he felt fine."

Dooku nodded and moved past her to stand directly in front of the bacta tank. He and Grievous regarded each other for a long time, silently. "I'd appreciate a certain expediency in the matter of his repairs," Dooku finally said. "I have need of him."

Lissa blinked again. Repairs? What she said was, "We should have him out of there and back on duty by tomorrow afternoon, sir."

"Good."

Count Dooku turned away from the tank. He paused beside Lissa, looked down at her and said, "I'm sure we'll speak again.", then left. She watched him stride to the door, elegant cape swirling in his wake. He hadn't said a word to Grievous. Huh! Nice boss…

While Grievous was still recovering in the bacta tank, the cyborg ordered that every living thing in the city where he'd been attacked be rounded up and slaughtered. Once out and back on his feet, he positioned his warships for an orbital bombardment and levelled what remained of the Shartilli civilization, watching all the while with grim satisfaction. The planet would serve just as well as a way station without its populace.

TBC


	6. Master And Commander

Hello again to all my readers and reviewers, and a special thanks to those of you who've taken the time to let me know exactly what it is about this story that you most felt worth commenting on, pro or con—it really does help me focus the writing so that you'll hopefully find it all as enjoyable and entertaining as possible as things progress. No warnings necessary this time around and I even try and make up a bit for putting the General through the wringer in the last chapter. I'm quite pleased with how Grievous turned out, a little philosophical sometimes as I was writing him up, but I think he came out okay despite that. This also turned out to be an awfully long chapter, and I think that'll be okay with most of you too.

Special note to the person who asked about whether it was all right to recommend this story elsewhere: Sure! Whatever! As far as I'm concerned, as soon as you post fanfic to a site like this, it becomes part of the public domain of fandom for fellow fans to use and respond to however they please (short of anything illegal). If I didn't want to share my Grievous-love, I'd be running off a single hard copy of this thing and adding it to my secret stash of personal drawer stories instead, and I already have plenty of those.

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 6 – Master And Commander

Grievous swung his lightsaber as fast as he could and his opponent parried. He jabbed again, a lightning feint to one side, and his adversary held him easily. He couldn't understand it. The old man barely seemed to move, just flicked his wrist and his arm would reach out and the crimson blade would extend to block the cyborg's attack every time. Meanwhile, Grievous was lunging in fits and starts, sword arm working furiously, weaving as he sought the opening which never came.

"Stop."

Grievous obeyed instantly and adopted a neutral stance with his blade held vertically before his face, blinking repeatedly and breathing hard and audibly in his frustration. Count Dooku gazed serenely back at him, the white of his hair flushed red by his own lightsaber.

"I want to see you counter now," the Count said. "Let me attack. Steady… Defend."

A single stride forward was all it took. Grievous was suddenly under serious assault. Enhanced speed or not, he could barely keep up as he fended off a flourish of blows which seemed to intelligently probe his entire defensive field, coming now from high up to his right, then low from the opposite quadrant, forcing him to swing wildly, almost clumsily, to protect himself. Dooku watched his own swordplay and that of his opponent as calmly as though he were a mere spectator and not a participant at all. Occasionally, he would take another small stride, to make Grievous back up further, otherwise his feet never moved.

A clever twisting jab brought Dooku's blade flickering up over the cyborg's own and Grievous found himself regarding the deadly tip of the Count's lightsaber hovering but a few centimetres before his eyes. He conceded defeat, panting again with vexation all the while. He supposed that he ought not to be so hard on himself for he'd only been practising with the elegant energy weapons for just under a year, whereas Dooku had been at the business of lightsaber fighting for longer than Grievous had been alive. Still, it was humiliating to lose so easily. On Kalee, Grievous had been considered a master swordsman, the best. He'd expected that his basic skills would translate directly once he began training with Dooku, but the Sith Lord, it seemed, was in a class all his own.

Dooku lectured Grievous as the two of them stood together. "Your moves are still too orthodox," he said in review. "Most Jedi never progress beyond defensive fighting. They acquire habits, certain stances that they don't like to vary. Your best weapon against this is surprise. You need to use your speed and stamina to interrupt their habits, get them moving, prevent them from becoming comfortable. Try again now. Attack."

Grievous did his best, jumping about, circling Dooku, switching his lightsaber from one hand to the other several times. He still couldn't penetrate the man's defences, but did get him moving, even if it was just tiny steps to one side or the other. Aside from that, Dooku barely seemed to shift his position at all, still plying his blade with an astounding deftness of hand.

He held off one blow from Grievous for an extra beat, let his own blade sag as if weakening, then instantly flipped it round and struck hard at the base of Grievous's blade. The hilt rattled in the cyborg's hand. Beaten again!

They stood facing one another in rest positions while Dooku critiqued his student once more, the only witnesses a couple of bins in the otherwise empty cargo bay, one of the few safe spaces in while to duel. They were fighting aboard Dooku's own personal galleon, a sumptuously outfitted luxury vessel from his family's private space fleet, manned by a crew of his own Serenno countrymen. The Count was taking Grievous with him to an important conference the human had arranged for all the Separatist Council leaders on the Outer Rim planet of Spree-Aten, a face-to-face meeting during which the representatives of the various member organizations were meant to compare and perhaps better consolidate their various assets for the good of the Confederacy; the first time Dooku was asking his cyborg commander to act in any sort of political capacity. Until they reached that world, however, there was this short lull during which he could train Grievous to better act in one of his other, more deadly capacities.

"Is your repair work affecting you in any way? Interfering with your flexibility, perhaps?" Dooku inquired.

Grievous touched a hand to the rebuilt cage of durasteel hoops protecting his lower chest, more robust now, no longer penetrable by even the tiniest of foreign objects. The heavier armour had added five more kilos to his weight.

"My body seems to have adjusted itself already," he said. "If I could have one last test…"

"Very well."

Dooku stepped back a little as Grievous reared up to his full height and lifted his arms. Then he performed the neat trick that his specially built arms had been designed for, splitting them suddenly in two from between his middle fingers all the way back to his shoulders with an unnerving metallic crack, each halved limb and hand still powerful and now independently functional. It had been a damnably hard thing for Grievous to learn, to use four arms. At first, he'd had to perform every move in sequence and with a conscious effort of will, first the upper right, then the lower left—a laughable example of the old gag about being unable to walk and chew gum at the same time. But gradually the knack had come to him as his heuristic programming accumulated a store of commands, the separate steps beginning to come together into coordinated motions aided by his peripheral processors until he no more had to think about how to control his metal limbs than he'd had to think about controlling his flesh and blood ones. All he had to do now was act. And the action he wanted to perform at this moment was to reach back with three of his hands and pull a further trio of lightsabers from their sleeve pockets in the lining of his cloak.

Three more spears of light ignited, two blues now, a green and a white. (He'd prudently left behind the red lightsaber he'd taken from the Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress, even though it was one of his favourites, because he knew that Dooku was still furious with him over the whole incident.) He assumed an attack position, head snaked down and out, body arched, legs bent, and upper hands held high, not unlike those of a picador about to stab a beast. A tiny flicker went through Dooku's eyes, just the merest change of surface gleam, but Grievous's acutely sensitive pit instincts, ever alert when he fought, too deeply ingrained into his very Kaleesh nature to eradicate without killing him, caught it even so, and he knew that for one microsecond Dooku had responded with an instinct of his own. Fear.

It shifted at once into something else Dooku probably didn't want him to know, that he disliked seeing Grievous fight with multiple lightsabers and felt a certain disdain for him when he did so, even though he openly taught the cyborg to embrace the tactic of shock and awe when confronting more than one foe at a time. Grievous hated such duplicity, and whenever he sensed evidence of it in his master, he sometimes hated him. Not this time, however. Grievous really did want to test his rebuilt armour and had no time to nurse his malice.

The cyborg began to spin his upper lightsabers, using the inhuman range of motion in his metal wrists to revolve the blades on a flat plane, turning them into defensive shields of fatal light. At the same time he began to glide forward, his gait becoming springy, elastic; his whole body seeming to flex and uncouple into something impossibly lithesome for a mere machine. He held his lower lightsabers at the ready tilted out to either side. His cape streamed away behind him like thick smoke. He came at Dooku and the Count gave ground at last, unwilling to make the first move.

Grievous sprang onto one foot and slashed with the offensive lightsaber on the opposite side. He sprang again and tossed his just used weapon to his freed foot, which grasped and wielded it as efficiently as his hands. He began the second part of his neat trick, juggling his blades with exquisite, hard-learned precision, bouncing acrobatically, the whirling lights becoming a confusing maelstrom of activity almost impossible to follow. It was the way he'd fought at Hypori, taking on five Jedi at once, confounding them so much with his ever changing positions that his enemies became unsure of what part of him or which weapon to target and hesitated, giving him time to lash out and score with deadly accuracy. He'd killed several of them and badly injured the rest, and had mourned at the time that any had escaped him at all. But that had been just as well, as it turned out. The survivors had warned the others that a dreadful new terror now stalked their Order and he relished the thought of all his future victims now living in fear of him, feeling the need to watch for him, embellishing his reputation in hushed voices.

It was probably good for Dooku that he'd left the Order when he did, Grievous thought. The Count could still engage and hold him, even now, even when fighting like this, yet it seemed to the cyborg that Dooku's need for concentration was growing as Grievous's expertise increased. The human always fought him now with lips pressed into a hard line whenever he allowed the cyborg to duel with him at full capacity. He paid attention in a way he hadn't before, the gaze of his dark eyes shifting and darting ceaselessly as he kept track of his student's intricate movements. Grievous had begun to entertain the notion that if only he were allowed to fight in multi-weaponed mode long enough that there was now a chance, just a chance, that he might actually beat Dooku, but that was something he'd never know because the Count never sparred with him for long when Grievous used more than one lightsaber. It offended him, after all.

When Dooku thought it time to finish the lesson, he ended it the way he always did, by waiting until he caught Grievous's flying form in a moment of suspension and using the Force to throw him down onto the ground, hard.

"Still too slow, General," Dooku chided. "You have to learn to anticipate a Force push, otherwise no number of lightsabers will save you."

Grievous got up slowly, staring straight ahead. The Count always acted as though the body slams were part of his training, but Grievous thought he knew what was really going on. It was his punishment for his steadfast refusal to bow to Dooku and reserving his obeisances for the true power among them, Lord Sidious.

"Come now," Dooku said. "We'll finish the trip in my sloop."

The cyborg followed him obediently to the hangar bay and the two of them boarded the Count's solar sailor, a personal vessel powered by a marvellous blend of modern and archaic space sailing technology which the Geonosians had custom-built for Dooku back when he'd still based his Separatist movement on Geonosis. Dooku still used the ship whenever it was convenient and advantageous for him to do so, and Grievous had to admit that it was one thing that they did have in common, a shared appreciation for unique, hand-made workmanship of the highest quality. But Grievous never sought it out, nor did he curry favour for it or expect to possess it as his birthright. Dooku did.

The unlikely pair sat in silence together in the interstellar sloop as they completed the remainder of their journey. Occasionally, Dooku would address a few words of command to the droid pilot, otherwise he passed the time by reading over whatever he had stored on his personal data padd. His Supreme Commander, he ignored. It was always like this between them, Grievous reflected. Dooku often had a great deal to say to him, when he trained him, when he reprimanded him, or when they discussed matters pertaining to the war and the establishment of the new order sweeping through the galaxy. But once their professional talk was done and time remained for more personal interaction, there was nothing, not even a pretense. Grievous supposed it had to do with Dooku's background. The human, he knew, had been born into privilege and wealth, a life he'd returned to after he left the Jedi Order. He'd have his own interpretations of what constituted status and social worth, no doubt ingrained in him while still a child before the Order had come to take him away, and Grievous, for whatever reasons, simply did not satisfy the man's standards.

Dooku would not have liked growing up on Kalee, Grievous thought bitterly. No one was ever automatically granted privilege there and the only advantage one ever had at birth was whatever one's forebears chose to pass down in the genes. Grievous's gift had been aggression. A snippet of childhood memory bubbled up, himself already trying to dominate his siblings although barely able to totter yet, his older brothers good-naturedly cuffing him away and laughing, his parents ruefully shaking their heads and saying, "There's one for the military." But that was all, and the memory soon sank back into the part of his mind that was normally inaccessible to him. A moment more, and he no longer even remembered that he'd recalled the snippet in the first place.

Spree-Aten soon appeared, centered in the sloop's forward viewports, and before long they could also see the sprinkling of vessels belonging to the attendees at the conference and the more ordered collection of warships further out, standing on guard. Count Dooku identified himself to the command warship as they approached, then had his pilot sail them past the flotilla of conference ships, just to enjoy the rare spectacle of so many differing alien vessels, most of them grand and luxurious indeed, berthed side by side in space.

Dooku indicated an extra-large starship, stationed off by itself a little. "Do you see that ship there, General?" he asked.

See it? How could he miss it? It was a kilometre long. "Providence-class carrier-destroyer," Grievous recited promptly. And then, because the part of him that could be stirred by the sight of a superb war machine still existed, added, "She's beautiful."

"Yes, the Invisible Hand. Our good friend, Viceroy Gunray, means to use it as his personal cruiser. He doesn't realize yet that once the conference is finished, I intend to take him aside and order him to turn over command of that vessel to you."

Grievous could barely believe what he'd just heard. "Mine?" he breathed.

"Or you can have Invisible Hand's sister ship, which I believe has just completed her trials," Dooku went on smoothly. "You can have that one as soon as she's commissioned, even be at the ceremony, if you like. She'll be named Lucid Voice."

Grievous thought it over, weighing the excitement of launching a brand new vessel versus the look on Gunray's face when Dooku broke the news. "I'll take this one, Invisible Hand," he said.

The Count smiled. "I thought you would."

Dooku ordered the pilot to break off their inspection and begin a descent to the planet. Grievous looked to his superior, knowing more was expected of him. "Thank you, Count Dooku," he said at last, voice husky as much with sincere emotion as with its usual inflection.

"I'm sure you'll use your new ship to its fullest capacity," the man replied.

The appearance of Grievous, trailing in behind Dooku when they finally entered the meeting rooms, sent a ripple of excitement through the collected Separatist leaders. The Count had apparently not told them that he was bringing the General along, and for many of the leaders it was their first live look at the cyborg, although they were all aware of his existence and his nefarious exploits. Grievous stood by himself while Dooku made the rounds, tolerating the stares and whispers with disdain, making no attempt to socialize and putting off any overtures by adopting a malignant glare as he looked over the various new alien faces in turn, matching them to the names and organizations he'd learned about and already loathing them all, for they seemed to him little more than power-hungry money-grubbers, the lot of them. The only one he had the slightest smidgeon of respect for was the Geonosian leader, Archduke Poggle the Lesser, and that was only because he knew that the Archduke had actively fought his way to his current position and once did battle in his kind's arena.

The conference proper soon began and the Separatist Council representatives each took their turn on the dais as the day wore on, boasting of their assets and the power they controlled and trying to jealously outrival one another as they outlined what they were contributing to the war effort. Grievous then mounted the platform and gave an operational briefing on the war's current status, pruned somewhat for civilian sensibilities and their need to know, and provided the performance of the afternoon as he stalked back and forth on the staging as he spoke, gruff voice running up and down its full range of inflection, eyes flashing with emotion as he swung his head about to ensure that they all understood he was no mere droid. Many of those watching him for the first time were never even sure afterwards of what exactly he'd said, they'd been too cowed and mesmerized by his eerie, ferocious mien, the tense violence in him which seemed scarcely contained as he paced and talked. If there was still a living creature within that metal exterior, they thought, then it must be a savage one, well deserving of its reputation, and that sentiment might not have displeased Grievous, had he known.

Grievous remained on the dais when Dooku came up, which engendered further unease. The unease soon escalated into distress and dismay when the Count made his big announcement preceding his wrap-up speech, that he was appointing General Grievous his second in command, the deputy leader of the Separatist Council beginning henceforth. The vicious cyborg in charge of them? What could Dooku be thinking! Grievous watched coldly as the Separatist leaders came to terms with what they'd just heard. He was not yet sure himself of how to feel about his new appointment; proud, yes, that he'd been chosen for such an important duty, but it was not a job he would have wanted or would enjoy, this shepherding of people he had very little use for, and actively disliked. But then, he disliked everyone. He would just have to get used to the assignment, the same as everybody else.

The only truly positive thing that came out of the whole trip for him in the end was the promise of the Invisible Hand. It did give Grievous a certain mean pleasure, whenever he looked at Viceroy Nute Gunray during the hours he was forced to endure the Neimoidian's presence, to imagine that flat cartilaginous face screwed up in hopeless outrage.

Count Dooku had pressing concerns involving the Techno Union and planets many parsecs away once the conference was over, and Grievous hitched a ride aboard the Intergalactic Banking Clan's cruiser, during which he found the company of the IBC representative San Hill, his onetime employer, as dull and unpleasant as ever. The General was actually glad to see droid faces for once by the time one of his own AGD frigates showed up to rendezvous with the cruiser and ferry him the rest of the way back to his fleet.

The Invisible Hand reported for duty a week later. Gunray had been livid all right, and Dooku had had to placate him by allowing a certain Trade Federation presence aboard the vessel after all. Grievous would have to tolerate having Neimoidian officers on the bridge, including the captain. The General told Dooku in dry reply that he thought he could handle it. His beautiful new flagship was so large that Grievous suspected that he could live aboard and meander around for a year without having to look at a single Neimoidian, as long as he always issued orders from afar and avoided the bridge.

The day after taking command of Invisible Hand, Grievous took out his first patrol of some of his new starfighters—droid tri-fighters and Vulture droids mostly, the squadrons led by battle droid piloted Voodoos, himself acting as wing commander in his favourite old Belbullab fighter. The droids worked well for him as he spent an hour at practising tactical manoeuvres and learning to coordinate communications and positioning with his squadron leaders, and they soon flew together as one smooth integrated team. Grievous led them to a nearby binary star system rife with planets and moons and they went through it all again, this time with the added distractions of gravitational pull and the occasional skip along an upper atmosphere to add a little spice.

At the very end of their second practice period, as they were making one last loop about the third outermost of the system's planetary bodies, they suddenly stumbled across a large starship lurking behind one of the world's moons.

Grievous was instantly suspicious. He held back and ordered his battle droid pilots to investigate, and listened in as a ridiculous conversation ensued, his droids demanding identification, the people on the mystery vessel fumbling over their Basic with excruciating slowness and rambling on about diplomatic immunity although they wouldn't say whose, then garbling the signal repeatedly and pleading equipment failure. Nobody was that incompetent and stupid, not even Neimoidians, Grievous thought, and the vessel looked nothing like any civilian job that he'd ever seen. He cut into the transmission angrily.

"This is General Grievous, Supreme Commander of the Separatist droid armies. Stop this nonsense and identify yourself at once or we'll blow you out of orbit!"

Dead silence followed, even though Grievous could tell that the line was still open and active. Then it shut off. Seconds later, the ship fired at them.

The General's fighters scattered instantly into one of the evasive patterns they'd just finished practising. They regrouped and shot back, targeting the mystery vessel's primary energy readings on Grievous's command, and blew out its engines just as it was powering up to flee. The disabled ship began blasting away again, unleashing a barrage of weaponry quite out of keeping with any mere diplomatic vessel.

Grievous ordered his fighters to utterly destroy the target and zoomed in to do his share. The ship's shields were already gone and it began to come apart. It stopped firing. Several escape pods shot away from beneath its forward section. And then, unexpectedly, out jetted a most distinctive silhouette to join the pods.

A Jedi interceptor! Grievous couldn't believe his luck. "Get the escape pods! Destroy them all! Leave the interceptor to me!" he shouted over his open commlink before his droids could target the little Republic fighter. He cranked his fighter from side to side unmercifully as he cut around his own flying droids, trying to get closer to the interceptor. The Jedi was trying to protect the pods, but in vain. There was only one of him, after all, and dozens of droid fighters.

The Jedi didn't give up until they'd scrapped the last pod, then shot away with Grievous hot on his tail. The interceptor was incredibly manoeuvrable, but the Belbullab was much faster and more powerful and more heavily armoured. Grievous knew that he had little to fear from the Jedi's weaponry and that his main problem would be not so much keeping up with the little craft as overshooting it as he gave chase. At one point, they drew even with one another, close enough for a few seconds that Grievous could see the pilot's mass of thick head tentacles and his big dark eyes staring over at him out of a green face—a Nautolan! The Jedi knew him too. He suddenly swerved his ship at the General's, trying to collide with him, but Grievous had been waiting for just such a move and accelerated up into a loop. He came back down behind the interceptor and fired a careful shot, trying to disable the craft, wanting to force the Jedi to land or surrender alive. The interceptor simply nipped aside and he missed. It went on like that for quite some time, Grievous working his way into position over and over to fire, his opponent always dodging away at the last second before the cyborg could do any damage, and all the while the two of them flying further and further away from the battle scene where they'd first engaged one another.

Luck and persistence favoured Grievous at last and he finally hit the interceptor's aft section. A thin plume of whitish mist began to stream out. Grievous, jubilant, thought he might have hit the ship's fuel lines. He pushed on ahead, meaning to draw even with the Jedi again, to jerk his hand downward in an unmistakable gesture, but the Nautolan was already angling away, looking for a place to put down.

He chose a moon swathed in the cloud that indicated a breathable atmosphere and plummeted down through the most unstable looking weather feature he could find, seeking even in this most dire moment to ditch his pursuer with Jedi smarts and trickery, trying to use the violent turbulence of a brewing tempest to literally shake Grievous off his trail. It didn't work. His enemy had a lock on him and rode it all the way down through the roiling updrafts and bursts of suspended rain and hail until the two broke out of the low overcast and slammed hard onto the ground, one after the other, both of them near-crashing. The Jedi flipped his cockpit hatch up at once and took off running and managed to get half a minute's lead before Grievous landed and jumped out in turn.

The moon was forested with needle-leaved scrub and short trees, the ground rocky and covered with lichen. Grievous raced along, not needing his sensory enhancements this time, using only the hunting skills he'd learned long ago while still a boy to track his fleeing prey, fast enough to act as his own steed as he ran the Jedi down. The gathering storm lowered above him. He sped through gloom and thick dank air.

The weather broke with a thunderous roar just as Grievous sprinted out of the ragged forest and crashed through a line of bushes and undergrowth and onto a band of harsh tufted grasses. The horizon abruptly stretched away before him, limitless and lost in fog and the sudden drenching rain. He'd come to the top of a crumbling cliff and skidded to a halt, then stepped carefully forward and stretched his head out.

The Jedi stood far below him on a rocky shoreline. He'd led Grievous to the edge of a sea, and if there was the hint of a rather unchivalrous smirk on the green face as the Nautolan looked up at his foe standing on the crest of the escarpment, the stark form etched in sharp relief against the wet, grey, lightning-wreathed sky, then he could perhaps be forgiven, for he thought he'd won, the ocean was home to him, even if alien, and the Jedi-killing cyborg with his heavy metal body couldn't swim.

The Nautolan gave a little wave as he backed through the breakers smashing into froth about his feet, then turned and waded briefly, then dove in. His tentacled head bobbed for a moment longer on the surface while he oriented himself, then vanished for good.

Grievous didn't hesitate a second longer. He rocketed down the side of the cliff and plunged straight through the surf, whereupon he gave the unsuspecting Nautolan the surprise of his soon-to-be-terminated life by leaping off the sea bottom and catching the swimming Jedi by the legs. The cyborg cracked his arms apart and used all four hands to hold his violently struggling prisoner safely pinioned as he dragged him back out of the water, then threw him onto the shingled shore like a landed fish.

The Nautolan jumped up with a most un-Jedi-like snarl contorting his face and drew his lightsaber and the fight was on. And what a fight it became, the cyborg pitted against an experienced old swordsman almost as aggressive as himself at last, the two of them hurtling up and down the beach in a running battle with their weapons arcing and spitting fire in the rain, the surf pounding and the thunder booming and the lightning crackling all around them as they clashed and parried, then drew apart, then sprang at each other again. Grievous restricted himself to a single lightsaber throughout, to make it last, and suffered a few rare dings, but his armourplast shielding was sound and protected him well. He retaliated whenever he was struck and managed to nip past the Jedi's defences and score several blows of his own, and the Nautolan was soon sporting his own collection of shallow wounds and burns.

The Jedi began using the Force directly, trying to flip his opponent off his feet. He was no Dooku, however, and the power he was able to channel was considerably lesser than what Grievous had gotten used to. He had also perhaps waited too long and fatigue ruined his subtlety—the cyborg read his intent and crunched his metal talons through the scree to solid bedrock and was able to anchor himself every time. The futile attempts drained the Nautolan further. His saber swings and thrusts started to falter, their precision fading. The duo no longer danced over the pebbles, trading leads, advancing then retreating in little sprints and dashes. It became a sad rout, the Nautolan stumbling back, the cyborg hounding him and still moving with the exact same tireless, fluid, deadly grace as when they'd started their match.

Grievous brought the exhausted Jedi to bay against the base of the escarpment and killed him with a single thrust through the heart. Afterwards, he turned the body face upward and looked at it for a long time while the dead black eyes filled with rain, memorizing the man's features for later. The Jedi's lightsaber also piqued his interest. Grievous's alien vision had perceived the blade as glowing a soft violet in colour, very unusual, the first such hue he'd seen, and he thought it might be worth having the crystals within the weapon analysed, just to satisfy his curiosity.

The General lifted his sleek head again and squinted through the water streaming over his own face and into the sockets of his mask. The thunderstorm had moved off over the sea. He could still hear it rumbling over the ceaseless beat of the waves and see the occasional flash of lightning now enveloped within the low scud and fog lying just offshore. The rain still sheeted down all around him, not slackening at all, hissing on the shingle. Grievous regarded his fallen foe one last time. Yes, let the sea come up over the beach and retrieve this one. The Nautolan was an amphibious creature. It would be appropriate for the tide to take him.

Grievous walked back to his landing site through the downpour. When he examined the Jedi's interceptor, he was pleased to discover that he hadn't damaged it badly at all and that it was quite salvageable. He climbed inside, finding the cockpit cramped even after he'd found the controls to manually lower and crank the seat back as far as it would go, and sat for a while looking over the alien controls and getting a feel for how the ship might fit him. He'd already decided to have the craft fixed up and learn to fly this favoured fighter of his enemies the way he'd learned to use their favoured weapon. Maybe he'd even use it to play a few sly tricks on the Republic forces, pretend to be a Jedi himself to get close enough to strike—yes, the irony of it already amused him. In between usages, his intelligence people would no doubt be glad to have the ship too. He didn't think they'd captured anything quite resembling this model yet.

General Grievous returned to his new flagship feeling happier than he had in a long time. The unexpected battle and the duel with the Jedi and recovering the interceptor all seemed an auspicious beginning for his command aboard the Invisible Hand. Once back in his office high up in the vessel's sensor and observation pod, he soon discovered that the Jedi he'd just killed had been the Jedi Master Thur Megia, one of the Order's oldest and most experienced, and that seemed a good omen also, that he'd been able to fight such a well-regarded warrior to a standstill one-on-one. He'd remember Thur Megia. The man had left his mark on him, a noticeable score on the cyborg's left chest plate, which the rainstorm had washed clean for him.

Grievous quit his office and strode out onto the observation deck he'd appropriated as part of his personal living quarters, an outrageous extravagance, but of course he had every intention of using the space for far more than just a residence. Intimidation, for example. The deck, perched atop a conning tower set back toward Invisible Hand's stern, commanded such a splendid view of most of his flagship's own mighty expanse and of his surrounding fleet that Grievous thought it just the sight to share with planetary leaders who were having trouble deciding to accept the Confederacy's generous offers of protection and management.

Pleasant schemes of threat and menace occupied Grievous's mind as he paced along the raised walkway adjoining the deck's expansive 180-degree wraparound bank of viewports. The Geonosians had gotten the problem with his new grey MagnaGuards fixed and he now had a stock of four different models of the specialist combat droids to chose from. A contingent of four apiece, no, six, all of them clad in the modified Kaleesh cloaks and headcloths signifying their elite status and loyalty to him, ought to make a fine display, Grievous thought, for any special visitors he entertained in his quarters. Perhaps some of his battle droid officers, too, and a droideka stationed to either side of the entrances onto the deck for added encouragement. He'd be sure to always wear his own campaign cloak with all of its sleeve pockets filled with his favourite lightsabers. And maybe a few extra affixed to his waist and his blaster holstered on his metal thigh—that would work well. Battle droid escorts would make his guests walk down the stairways into the well of the deck, and then they'd have to climb up again to meet with him as he stood waiting on the walkway by the viewports, hands behind his back and holding his cape away from his sides, head lowered and thrust forward so they'd see his eyes and know at once that they were dealing with a living being and not a damn machine. And his fleet and armies, of course, filling the void beyond and always providing a glorious backdrop.

The cyborg's thoughts slid again onto the subject of the Jedi he'd just fought. A Jedi Master protecting a diplomatic ship, well, that was just typical. He wondered what species or organization had greased the Republic palm to earn that little favour. Perhaps the intelligence section could figure it out from the routine combat footage shot by his starfighter and some of the battle droids' ships before they'd blown the so-called diplomatic vessel into atoms. If the Republic had started saving its best Jedi warriors to guard politicians, then he wanted to know all about it. He thought again about how he'd plunged into the sea after Thur Megia, the creature's shock when he'd first wrapped his fingers about the slippery alien ankles…no, the Nautolan hadn't seen that one coming, hadn't realized that the Separatists' top Jedi-killer could now pursue him underwater. Grievous supposed that he ought to inform the Geonosians that their rebreather upgrade had just undergone its first practical test and had performed beautifully, deploying the instant the water had flooded his neck and snicking away again into its recess as soon as the need for it was over and he'd cleared his breathing aperture with a vigorous snorting exhalation. Maybe they'd give that human woman the day off or an extra hour's break or something, whatever it was civilians did to reward one another when they'd done good work. The whole notion of the rebreather had been hers, as he recalled.

A delicious idea of his own suddenly inundated Grievous's mind. He mulled it over, found it sound, deliberated some more, liked it even better, and jacked his arm up and activated the embedded commlink. He issued a few terse orders, then stationed himself by the viewports on the right side of the observation deck, to watch for the incoming shuttle.

The human woman, Lissa Veleroko, soon arrived, stumbling out of one of the lifts at the back of the observation deck, the two battle droids that routinely monitored all her movements dutifully flanking her. She was rubbing her puffy eyes under her bangs because for her it was the middle of the night and Grievous had just thoughtlessly had her shaken out of a sound sleep, but she woke up fast when she saw the view and the full expanse of the room and the General waiting for her at the far end of it. She hadn't gotten to see anything of Invisible Hand on the shuttle ride over.

The droids marched her over to Grievous along the walkway. Her apprehension rose as she got closer to him even though her conscience was utterly clear for once and the cyborg looked…well, kind of normal for a change. He wasn't hunched over or reared up or glaring at her at all, nor did he look sick or injured in any way. He was just—standing, arms hanging down at his sides, legs flexed a little and set well beneath himself. And wearing his incongruous cape, fastened to fit snugly about the cowling encircling his neck mechanisms. It gave him a look she found at once both dashing and slightly absurd, but then they all seemed a little cape-happy to her, these Separatist higher-ups.

She got to him and stood there herself while he looked her over, expressionless, not saying a word. Lissa wasn't very good at tolerating awkward silences. "Nice ship," she tried. "Yours?"

Ass! Of course it was his ship! Grievous didn't seem to mind the extreme brainlessness of her question, merely said, "My flagship.", in an offhand way, and then turned away and began gazing out a window. She waited some more, biting her tongue, still utterly clueless as to why he'd had her dragged out of bed and brought to him at such an insane hour.

"I am in the process of reorganizing my staff," he said at last, "and it occurred to me that there is one position which I've left unfilled until now." His head swivelled and he looked pointedly at Lissa. "That of personal physician."

Nothing. No enthusiasm. No instant gratitude. Just a dull stare and a frown line deepening in the skin between her oddly haired eyebrows. Grievous swung fully about and stepped back in front of the woman. "On my world," he added, and his voice was now much colder, "such an position would be one of great honour."

Grievous's tone, lowering into an area she so did not want to visit, booted her instantly out of her stunned disbelief.

"Er, it's not that, it's…General, I—think you may have gotten a very wrong impression of me. I have no medical training, not really, just what my mother taught me and what I've picked up from colleagues over the years. I've never been officially sanctioned or certified. I couldn't give you even the most rudimentary examination or handle any sort of useful drugs or prescribe them, not legally."

"I'm not interested in paperwork or legalities, only performance," Grievous said impatiently. "You do have a thorough understanding of your own kind's physiology, yes?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"And Nagas has told me that of all the species assigned to my fleet, yours and mine are physically the most similar, correct?"

"Well, I—guess, yes. But—"

"Then it should be easy for you to learn Kaleesh physiology once provided with the appropriate medical data. I'll see to it that all of my personal records are released to you as well," Grievous plowed on, oblivious to her consternation. "Now, how is your understanding of heuristic programming?"

Lissa had to put a hand up to her face to steady herself against the sudden switch in topics. "Heuristics, um, yes. Nagas has been working with me on that—"

"Good. You'll be responsible for the proper functioning of my MagnaGuards as well. That is what the position entails, caring primarily for me, and then my elite. I'll authorize that an office and quarters be arranged for you here on Invisible Hand. You'll be expected to report aboard whenever the fleet is at battle stations."

"B—battle stations?" she almost yelped.

"Yes," the cyborg confirmed. And then, because it had been an excellent day for him and he was still in an overall very good and forgiving mood, leaned way down and purred into her face, as if in confidence, "Unless, Miss Veleroko, you have an objection to exposing yourself to warfare, do you? Would prefer to accompany me as I go about negotiating or overseeing the signing of treaties instead, something very safe?"

What the—? Was he trying to be funny? Insinuating that she was a coward? "Of course not," she said indignantly. "That'd be pointless." Then could have kicked herself because it sounded as though she'd already accepted the position and agreed to its terms. Wait a minute, what in the hell just happened here, she thought, confused.

Grievous straightened up again, satisfied.

"I'll send for you once the office is ready," he said, and nodded at her battle droid escorts. "Dismissed."

The droids took her out, a look of bafflement still on her face. By the time she crawled back into bed on the droid tender, she'd already half-persuaded herself that she'd just experienced a lucid dream and that the meeting hadn't actually occurred. By the time morning rolled around, she woke up convinced that it'd all just been some weird-ass nightmare until Gregory shattered her belief by demanding to know where the battle droids had taken her in the middle of the night for half an hour and why had she looked so stricken and funny when she came back.

Grievous, of course, never knew anything of this and wouldn't have cared if he did. He spent the rest of his night thinking up more schemes and plots and mentally trying out new ways of introducing himself to all the hapless people he planned to subjugate. I am General Grievous, he thought, Supreme Commander of the Separatist droid armies, deputy leader of the Council of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and these are my elite warriors and my bodyguards, and my executive officers, and my personal physician. Yes, he liked the sound of all that, especially the addition of the physician. It made him sound alive.

TBC


	7. The Eyes Have It

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 7 – The Eyes Have It

Nagas the Patriot not only wouldn't sympathize when Lissa came whining to him about what Grievous was demanding of her, he quickly revealed that he'd had a hand in the situation as well.

"Ah, did he ask you finally?" the Geonosian said in response to her complaints. "I'm glad. I suggested some time ago that he assign himself someone to look after his maintenance and care."

"But he wants me to look after those creepy bodyguards of his too and be some kind of—of field medic, I think!" she sputtered.

"If it's only for him, how hard could it be? There isn't much left of his organics. There are only a limited number of things that can still go wrong with him and you've already dealt with one of the worst."

"But—" She halted, voluntarily stopping before she embarrassed herself further. Lissa wasn't even sure why she was getting so upset. She loved Grievous's design, ought to have been tickled pink for this unparalleled opportunity to get to really know the cyborg, inside and out. And if he himself was touchy and ill-tempered, what of it? She'd worked with mean-spirited cranks before and always survived. Maybe Grievous was right and she really was just being cowardly at the thought of having to work under fire. Not a very nice revelation, if true.

"I don't know if I can do this," she admitted unhappily.

"Of course you can," Nagas said. "And you won't be alone. My team has a battle assignment too. We'll be setting up a special shop aboard Invisible Hand and dispatching three techs just to stand by and tend to Grievous's MagnaGuards whenever there's any fighting. Most of what happens to those droids needs shop work anyway. It takes a lot to slow them down. You won't be able to do much for them in the field normally, and will have to send almost all of the damaged ones on to us for repairs."

"Oh, I didn't realize that."

"Now you do. You can send Grievous down to us too, if he wrecks himself. He's damaged his joints before and ruined a foot once. We usually carry a full line of replacement parts for him."

"Oh," said Lissa again, starting to feel much better. She'd had the idea that she'd be trying to coordinate such matters with the maintenance crew already on board, Neimoidians and droids that she didn't know at all. Finding out that she'd have the Geonosians working nearby in tandem with her made the entire prospect of serving as General Grievous's personal physician seem suddenly much less daunting. "Thanks, Nagas!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know that your folk were going to get mixed up in this too."

"It'll be a lot easier to do it this way than to try and use the facilities on the droid tender," the Geonosian Aristocrat went on. "You cannot transport broken droids around much during a battle anyway. It's needlessly risky and just delays things, and it'll be important that we keep any down-time to an absolute minimum, especially the General."

"Okay. That makes sense."

"I'll be aboard the first time or two that we deploy, just to supervise, so you can call on me if you really need help. You'll be fine, though. Besides, Grievous likes you. He'll be forgiving."

"Ha ha. And you know this because…?"

"Well, he hasn't killed you yet, has he?" Nagas said, and flipped his curved snout in a gesture of good humour.

All their speculating didn't last much longer. A few days later, they got the message that their battle stations had been prepared and were ready for inspection, and Nagas brought as much of his team as he could safely get off work over to the Invisible Hand to look things over. He let his fellow Geonosians go on by themselves to the maintenance sections below and accompanied Lissa, Trigger and Gregory to the office and temporary quarters that had been set up specifically for the human's use.

The layout turned out to be unexpectedly posh, a large space with a huge oblong viewport that almost filled one wall from the ceiling to the decking. The window was so extensive that when Gregory flitted over to it, he could land and stand on the floor and still look out.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "You'll be able to see the ships fighting and everything!"

"Thank you, Gregory. I so want to watch spaceships tearing each other apart and droids and people dying," Lissa replied. She said it with a grin, though. Addressing Nagas, she added, "What is this place? Or was, I mean? It's like an admiral's suite or something."

"Part of the wardroom complex, I think," the Geonosian said. "A private officers' lounge. With so few living personnel aboard, there are probably quite a few entertainment areas going unused."

Lissa had already gone on to check out the most important area, partitioned off behind a door. "They've already got a washroom installed back here," she called out. "Put in a shower, too, looks like." She came out again, smiling happily—smiled even more when she took a quick bounce on the sturdy cot bed set up for her in the far corner and found it downright comfortable. "Liveable all right," she proclaimed. "Nagas, I think you were right. This doesn't seem like it'll be so bad after all."

"What did I tell you?"

The working facilities she'd been given seemed just as luxurious to Lissa, who'd often made do with very little. There was an oversized, fully adjustable infirmary chair that seemed a copy of the one Nagas usually used when tending to Grievous, a great deal of medical equipment, including a microsurgical laser, and an alcove with a fully loaded workstation and room to tinker. All she really needed to keep herself busy, Lissa thought with much cheer, and as a bonus, that utterly fantastic viewport. She could already imagine herself having a good sit-down before it, lounging casually on the floor with a pillow and a blanket and her two droids while she read over files on a padd. In the midst of all her anticipation and Nagas's nodding approval, Grievous suddenly strode in without notice.

It was Gregory who responded first, marching over to look impudently up at the towering cyborg. "It's very rude to just walk in without knocking!" he scolded. "You should—"

"Na na!" Lissa cried, swooping in and snatching the little droid up just as Grievous was shifting his weight onto one foot. She shook Gregory until his head rattled as she hurriedly carried him to the far side of the room, just in case. "General Grievous has every right to go wherever he pleases, when he pleases, without ever needing to announce himself first, got it?" she hissed loudly. She dropped Gregory onto her new workstation table and added sotto voce, "Even if it is rude." Gregory paid no attention and glared right past her back at the cyborg, or at least did as passable an imitation of a glare as any plushy kids' toy-looking droid with two big black half-spherical screens covering its optical sensors could manage. Lissa gave up and slunk back to Nagas's side. "Sorry," she muttered.

Grievous stared at her. "Your invention, that droid, is it?" he asked.

"Uh, yes."

"What a surprise." To Nagas, he said, "Is everything satisfactory?"

"It appears to be, General," the Geonosian replied. "We'll know better once we've finished looking over the inventory and run through a few practical exercises."

"Fine. I will need you and Miss Veleroko in the main hangar bay at fifteen thirty hours. Be there." He shot a fierce glance over at Gregory and Trigger both. "Don't bring the droids."

Grievous's insistence on their presence in the hangar bay turned out to be for a security concern involving his MagnaGuards. When they got there, they found that he'd assembled every one of the fearsome bodyguard droids under his command into ordered ranks, dozens of them standing in silence, their multiple optical sensors glowing redly, row on row. Grievous instructed them to activate their visual recognition sequences and then had Nagas and Lissa present themselves in an eerie little ritual designed to afterwards exempt them from any possibility of being attacked should they ever have reason to approach Grievous if he were incapacitated or rendered unconscious during battle. He further instructed his guards that in such a case, they were to obey all Geonosians and Lissa Veleroko specifically in his place if need be. Lissa almost asked why she was being singled out and the Geonosians not, then realised why. Most humans were still on the side of the Republic forces.

The woman also discovered that she was going to get a special new quartet of battle droid escorts whenever she was aboard during battle stations. They were the usual lanky Trade Federation models, three regular soldiers and an officer, the latter distinguished by bright yellow markings that immediately earned him the moniker of 'Sunny' in Lissa's mind. Sunny was quite bright and capable of limited conversation, but the others were just male bimbo versions of Lola minus the motor mouth all over again, each of them seeming more pea-brained than the next and almost impossible for Lissa to tell apart. They were all noticeably scratched and dinged up, which made her wonder whether they were on their last assignment before being scrapped, or perhaps it just meant that they were good fighters and experienced—she hoped so because their primary duty was going to be protecting her whenever she was planetside. Grievous, it seemed, was prepared to safeguard her services, even if he didn't seem to much value her.

The Geonosians' own battle station was immediately adjacent to the main hangar bay and was quickly deemed by all to be just as luxurious in its way as was Lissa's space. They all agreed that a comfort-loving Neimoidian must've been responsible for setting up their accommodations. A droid officer would never have been so generous or caring at all about the basic niceties. The entire group then spent the rest of their stay that afternoon clearing in at the various sections they'd be dealing with whenever aboard, registering at the mess, getting their signing authorities for equipment and materials straightened out, and sight-seeing a bit en route. They made for quite the entertaining attraction for the occasional Neimoidian crewman they ran into during their dealings, the lean, tall, leggy insectoids with their gauzy wings and distinctive long downfaced heads, and in their midst the much shorter and more compact human's bejumpsuited figure with her long blonde hair trailing down her decidedly wingless back.

After that it was simply a matter of returning to their normal everyday business and waiting. They didn't have to wait long. The week following, Nagas gave everyone the heads-up that the fleet would soon be engaged in a quick strike on a supposedly Trade Federation-held world, something about restoring order after a native uprising. What they couldn't know was the outright glee with which General Grievous was masterminding this particular operation. It was a situation tailor-made to feed his enmity towards all Trade Federation personnel, for he still could not let go that one of their leaders, Nute Gunray, had once insulted him months ago back on Geonosis.

It turned out to be an ideal initiation for the entire biodroid team. They got called out fast and when they arrived at the Invisible Hand, the attack on the planet below, a grim enslaved industrial world with the unfortunate name of Molyha, was already underway. Fighter ships roared in and out of the hangar bay non-stop, and larger vessels, some transporting the ominous ground assault machines the civilians had only glimpsed stashed off in the background during their earlier visit, lumbered out more slowly at intervals. The din was horrific and almost wholly mechanical, just screeching metals and running engines and the odd rare yell by some living line crewman, trying to direct the chaotic traffic. The three Geonosian techs plus Nagas scooted off to their shop at once and Lissa had just time enough to run up to her own station and collect her gear while her battle droid bodyguard leader, Sunny, arranged a berth on the next departing multi-troop transport designed to carry living as well as droid soldiers.

The transport set them down in a city in what looked to Lissa to be a bombed out plaza. The noise was just as bad as in the hangar bay, massive explosions and sounds of shelling going on in front of and on either side of her, and the woman got pretty shaky for a while, trembling in harmony with the ground beneath until she realized that all the fire was directed outward and that none whatsoever was incoming. It became bearable after that and she was able to give some thought to her duties again.

"Where's General Grievous?" she asked.

Sunny pointed towards a nearby street. "Down there. Eighty-seven meters away."

"Oh. You're…in touch with him?"

"With one of his MagnaGuards."

Of course. Easy to forget that the droids' communications amongst themselves was almost always silent to human ears. Even Grievous had numerous internal commlinks scattered throughout his machine body that he could activate and use in conjunction with his built-in antennae without ever saying a word aloud. Sunny's job was to keep Lissa close enough to the General's position to be useful in case of an emergency, yet also keep her reasonably safe. Maintaining a constant link with one or the other of Grievous's bodyguards was the easiest way for the battle droid officer to accomplish this.

Some small arms fire briefly chattered nearby and then Lissa saw the cyborg for the first time, exiting one of the buildings lining the street which Sunny had indicated, along with several of his MagnaGuards. He was moving fast and looked fine, and seconds later the whole party shifted into a fast run and sprinted on ahead out of sight again. Sunny dutifully led his charges on too, following the General.

Lissa finally got her chance to act when they eventually entered another partially cleared zone within the city, this one dominated by a landed transport vessel and an artillery position being worked by busy battle droids. A MagnaGuard was also waiting for her there, walking towards her with one arm dangling. She saw at a glance that it was major damage—the limb was almost sheared off beneath its shoulder joint—and got Sunny to call and alert the Geonosian team, then prevail upon the pilot of the transport to ferry the droid up. All went smoothly and the pilot didn't question her authority at all, just took the MagnaGuard aboard and off they went. Lissa watched the transport lift away, thinking that it'd been way too easy.

"Physician!"

Lissa jumped. It was Grievous's deep voice, bellowing at her in exactly the fashion she'd hoped never to have to hear. She looked about wildly until Sunny pointed him out way over by the artillery position with several more of his MagnaGuards. The instant Grievous saw that she was looking his way, he lifted an arm and pointed at one of his bodyguards. She hurried over, her battle droids trailing along behind, already tugging open the kit she'd put together for purely mechanical concerns.

As she came up to the group, she saw something else that suddenly put the hair up on the back of her neck. The bone-white armour plating on Grievous's arms and chest, even his head, was bloodied with great purplish-red gouts and streaks of what could only have been arterial spray.

Lissa suppressed a shudder. The cyborg had killed somebody, obviously, more likely a whole lot of somebodies. Not that blood per se bothered her, it was just that she'd had the idea that he always used those Jedi weapons, the lightsabers, which normally cauterized as they cut. He must've used his blaster instead this time, or maybe even his bare hands. She knew he had strength enough in those long arms and strangely delicate-looking fingers to pulverize and tear any humanoid body into shreds if he chose to do so.

The MagnaGuard Grievous had indicated was dragging one foot. She knelt down and popped the access hatch above the droid's instep and found to her relief that it was a problem she could actually do something about, just a broken connection. She repaired it quickly, so absorbed in her work that she never even noticed Grievous watching her for a moment with rare approval before he took off again with his undamaged guards. The restored MagnaGuard was also off again as soon as she'd run him through a quick functional test, and that was that. One MagnaGuard sent to the shop and a second fixed on the spot. Lissa started to feel pretty good about herself.

The action all over the city seemed to be winding down. The droids manning the artillery piece had stopped firing some time ago and soon removed the weapon's remaining live rounds and began securing their ordnance for transport. Sunny kept them hanging about the artillery position awhile, then announced that they'd been given the okay to stand down too and return to the flagship. Lissa was surprised. She'd thought she'd have to stay planetside as long as did Grievous or any of his elite, but it seemed that the General had already declared the battle to be won and over, and all further danger to himself now negligible.

Lissa asked Sunny to leave her at the Geonosians' repair shop instead of bringing her up to her own station once they were aboard the Invisible Hand, and she spent the next hour helping to get the remaining damaged MagnaGuard functional again. After that, it was just a matter of mopping up, restocking any materials that had been used up (nothing of note, in Lissa's case), and filing some necessary paperwork, then all of them were free to go. In response to Lissa's queries, Nagas explained that all of the MagnaGuards that'd been used in the assault would be routinely checked over later by the destroyer-carrier's own maintenance crew, but unless a problem were discovered that dealt specifically with the specialty droids' heuristic programming, the ship's staff would handle any further repair work themselves. He then asked the human woman how she felt about her first stint of battle duty and she said that she'd quite enjoyed the experience and probably would again, as long as no one took an actual pot shot at her.

Grievous's fleet remained in orbit about Molyha for only another thirty-six hours before handing it back over to a much reinforced Trade Federation police army. Two days after that, the last of Lissa's security checks came through and she was finally cleared to look at the whole of Grievous's medical files. It was serious stuff. Even Nagas seemed concerned for once as he ran off a copy of the pertinent data and packaged it for transport over to the Invisible Hand, and impressed upon Lissa several times that it contained sensitive research information for medical staff eyes only, that even the General himself was not to look at it or be privy to its discussion.

Lissa's usual two faithful battle droid escorts took her over to the flagship and they were soon walking down the major thoroughfare corridor linking the relatively few portions of the vessel that had life support up and running. After the frenetic activity Lissa had seen going on during battle stations, the Invisible Hand on this day seemed almost deserted, but that of course was just an illusion. The mostly droid crew was there all right, just concentrated in the unpressurized parts of the ship or deactivated until they were needed again.

Some life was still afoot, however. A sound of rapid tapping came to the trio from ahead, gaining in volume until it overrode even the battle droids' clacking steps. General Grievous abruptly appeared from around the bend in the corridor, striding fast, slouched over and head down. He straightened up as soon as he saw Lissa and the droids and halted right in front of them, forcing them to stop in turn.

"Why are you here?" he demanded.

Lissa held up her satchel, adorned with its profusion of classification symbols. "I have the remainder of your medical files here. They had to be hand-delivered in any case, so I thought I might as well come over and get them input myself."

Grievous nodded. "Very well. Carry on," he said, and slumped back down before walking on. Lissa happened to glance at his face as he moved past with his head on a level with her own and suddenly spotted something she didn't like the look of at all.

"General? Could you wait a bit, please?"

He stopped again and swivelled his head around to stare at her. "What is it now?"

Much to his irritation, all the woman did was come up and simply stare back, directly into his face. He was about to fire off another, much nastier retort, when she said, "Do you have something under your eye, sir? The left one? Just under the inner part of your mask there?"

Grievous suppressed a slight start. "It's just a cut," he admitted. "It's almost healed."

"You got this during the fighting last week?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't think to inform me?"

"It's minor," he insisted. "The bacta will finish cleaning it up."

"You're not scheduled for a bacta treatment for another eight days," Lissa said. "And it doesn't look like it's healing to me. It looks quite swollen, actually. Is it hurting you?"

"No, it's nothing."

"I'm sorry, General, but I have to disagree. I think you should let me look at it."

Grievous straightened up again. "I don't have time for this," he growled, glowering down at her.

"And I'm afraid, as your physician, sir, that I'm going to have to insist that you make time and come with me and let me look at that right now, sir, General Grievous, sir," Lissa replied, stumbling over a whole string of honorifics in her nervousness and acute awareness of what had happened the last few times she'd tried to defy him. The only thing that made her persistent was her belief that she was operating from within a set of rights which even he would have to acknowledge this time…thought he would have to acknowledge. It came to her belatedly as she stood there trying not to wither under his glare that perhaps Separatist medical officers didn't have quite the same authority over ships' commanders as did those serving aboard Republic vessels.

On the other hand, maybe they did. The cyborg suddenly capitulated with an exasperated, "All right!" He jerked his head, indicating that she was to go on, and fell in behind her, hovering and breathing down her neck again in the same annoying fashion as he'd done back on Marku.

Once inside her office, Lissa first got the uploading of the secure files started, then turned to her reluctant patient, who'd already seated himself in the infirmary chair and was waiting with scarce concealed impatience. She got his faceplate off without too much fumbling and saw at once that the small scabbed-over wound beneath his eye was not just swollen but likely infected. Nothing my ass, she thought, but at least it looked to be a simple enough injury, nothing she hadn't handled before when doctoring herself on occasion during the years she'd had to rough it on her own. She wouldn't have wanted to try dealing with something exotic or beyond her limited scope her first time treating Grievous for a legitimate medical reason.

The General had already fallen into his usual routine of pretending to be elsewhere and stared away into nothingness as she fussed over him, but his focus returned as soon as she began hooking up his vocabulator with a temporary connection. "This'll let you continue speaking, if you like," she said in response to his questioning expression, and placed his faceplate and the short coil of linking wire on his shoulder. It was something she'd decided to do days ago, almost the instant she'd resigned herself to her new duty. She just didn't like the thought of Grievous sitting there voiceless should she ever have to work on him and had sworn to herself that she'd insist on taking the extra moment or so to reconnect his vocabulator any time she had to take off his mask, despite any protestations from him. Not that he was protesting any. In fact, he seemed unexpectedly pleased for once, or so it seemed from the way he curiously regarded what she'd done.

The only drawback was that it had attracted his attention directly onto herself, and Lissa found it none too easy to continue working under the cool gaze of someone who lost not one iota of their formidable aspect despite lying down and being partially undressed, as it were.

She didn't believe Grievous's assertion that the injury wasn't hurting him and gave him a small dose of local anaesthesia before getting started. He tolerated the injection without reacting, somewhat to her surprise. What did bother him was when she placed a folded towel on his chest beneath his head and began gently dabbing at the scab with warm water to soften its hold preparatory to removing it. This part of her ministrations he bore for all of thirty seconds before irritably snapping, "Just pull it off."

Lissa frowned at him. "That would damage the skin," she said, and went right on doing what she was doing. It actually didn't take much longer. Just as she'd suspected, the wound was hot and the scab had already been partially lifted by the wet infection brewing beneath. She got it off easily and found a nasty bit of abscessing starting up, still contained and easy to squeeze out.

She triumphantly held up what she eventually found at the center of the pus with a pair of forceps, a chip of metal shrapnel half the size of her little fingernail.

"This is why you need to come and see me if you have even the slightest injury," she told him. "This would never have healed on its own. It could have developed into a serious infection within a few more days and spread to your eyes, even travelled into your brain, and then what? To be quite blunt, General, you have very little natural immunity left. You're always going to be susceptible to infection when hurt, unless you let us treat you aggressively right away."

The expression in his eyes was very sullen as she finished cleaning out the wound. Once done, she went off to remove her gloves and wash her hands, then came back and began gently pressing the extremities of the flesh about his eyes with her fingertips.

"What are you doing?" he said, sounding alarmed. (Strange to hear his voice coming from the vicinity of his shoulder.)

"I need to know how well you can still feel. Can you sense me touching you, here above the brows?"

"Yes! It's fine!"

"And here, at the corners?"

"It's…numb."

She quickly determined that the same areas Nagas had pointed out as having poor circulation also appeared to have some nerve damage—danger spots, in short, that would bear watching since Grievous wouldn't be able to depend on pain to warn him of any developing problems. But everything right around his eyes and brows seemed all right and still as sensitive to touch as it ought to be, too sensitive even, considering how much he fidgeted and squirmed and tried to turn his head away as she examined him.

He got even worse when she insisted on rubbing a good soothing antibiotic ointment into his skin and over his eyelids, breathing so hard that she could hear it and lifting his arms and clenching his hands as though he meant to bolt right out of the chair.

"General, will you please relax?" she admonished, frowning at him again. "It's just an antibiotic cream. It'll help catch any stray bacteria from your wound and do your skin good—it seems very dry." He quieted down long enough for her to finish. When she tried to complete her treatment with a couple of eye drops, however, he suddenly sat up so abruptly that he almost knocked the applicator out of her hand and sent his faceplate tumbling into his own lap.

"Enough! The Geonosians never do any of this!"

"The Geonosians don't believe in preventative medicine. I do!" she shot right back. "Now please, humour me and let me finish treating your eyes! I really think this will help with the irritation you feel from the implants sometimes. Just a few eye drops and that'll be the end of it."

"Mmrph," Grievous said, or something like that, and sank back down. But not onto his back, he insisted on sprawling over onto his side this time, lying there like an bad-tempered, antsy cat so he could fully look at her and watch while she inserted the drops, then shake his head at once to show how much he hated it. Lissa thought he was being positively childish since she knew darn well that she wasn't hurting him a bit and couldn't understand what his problem was. She got a tissue to blot up any excess and dabbed one last time at his still slightly weeping wound.

She concluded by simply regarding him after that, finally looking at his eyes as features reflective of their owner's considerable will and personality instead of just as portions of his body whose health she had to assess and care for. They were certainly memorable eyes, well spaced and with nicely shaped, pronounced lids and expressive, mobile brows that were usually hidden by his mask unless he pulled them way down, and even quite a pretty colour, a sort of yellow-gold with a metallic sheen. Lissa guessed that Grievous had once been quite handsome, in his alien way, but of course, that part of him was gone now. All he had left were his golden eyes. Sad, really.

She reattached his faceplate after wiping down its interior and he got up and started for the door before she even put her utensils down. "Just a moment, General," she called. "There's something more I'd like to say."

He halted, at least, although he wouldn't turn around. She contemplated his back thoughtfully.

"I'm not even going to pretend to understand what's really going on here," she finally said. "I just want you to know that even if you don't take my position seriously, I do, and I intend to try and do my best for you. And I wish you'd help me by, well, cooperating a little better and taking advantage of what expertise I do have. I wouldn't like for you to do yourself harm just because you couldn't be bothered, and I'd hate to see you do something really foolish like lose those eyes of yours out of sheer neglect."

He stiffened. Turned his head about, very slowly, until he was staring back at her over one shoulder. "Is that all?" he asked, in a flat tone as indecipherable as his expression.

"Yes, I think it is," Lissa replied softly.

He continued on out and she sighed. Ouch, he hadn't liked hearing that too much. Still, it had to be said. She had to protect herself. If he went ahead and wrecked himself now, at least she could always honestly say that she'd tried to talk to him about it, but he'd chosen to ignore her.

She sighed again as she finished cleaning up, still innocently unaware of the full extent of the upset she'd just caused Grievous. He'd hurried up to his quarters the instant he'd gotten away from her so he could stand in his favourite spot before his spectacular bank of viewports and brood in private and stare out through what was not quite yet his window of woe, but which was fast becoming his window of malcontent whenever things particularly disconcerted him.

The numbing agent the woman had used on him had already worn off. Grievous lifted a hand to his face and gingerly felt about his wound with one fingertip. He'd lied to her about the discomfort it'd been causing him. He'd been feeling stabbing pains that had been getting steadily worse for the past two days. The cut was still very sore even now, but it was only the residual soreness of a wound that had been well tended and was finally starting to heal. And the swelling had already subsided considerably. There was space again between the underside of his faceplate and skin.

His own dishonesty bothered him. He had no idea of why he'd felt the need to lie. It didn't make any sense to him. Part of his duty as a good soldier was to keep himself in the best fighting condition possible and look after himself or ensure that other people did so. He hadn't done that, had even gone out of his way to behave otherwise. Had he always been so difficult when it came to routine medical concerns, so uncooperative, as the human had charged? Grievous didn't think so, but couldn't remember for sure. He did know that he had a large family befitting his status, a lot of offspring and numerous wives. He wouldn't have that if his disposition had ever been in any way suspect…would he?

Grievous trailed his finger over beneath his eye, absently rubbing the skin. The woman had touched him with her bare hands. He hadn't expected that. Nobody had touched him since before his accident, not really, not even the Geonosians, who were always dickering around with his eyes and who invariably used something—an applicator, delicate instruments—between him and their large, naturally armoured fingers. They only put their hands on him directly when they needed their sure, strong grips to move around some of his heavier droid components, and touching his droid body was not touching him at all in Grievous's opinion, since the tactile sense his machine self experienced was nothing like real feeling, it was all just variable pressure and the detection of movement and temperature gradients. He sometimes made the link and interpreted warmth as pleasant because he still recalled enjoyable times spent basking in the sunlight and dozing before a good fire on a chilly evening, but otherwise there was nothing—never any pleasure to be gotten from the sensors strewn across his exterior, and no pain, either. The sensual connections had all been broken. Except for the flesh about his eyes. He still felt there.

The cyborg shifted from foot to foot with rare distress. What agitated him most was that he was sure he'd experienced sensations similar to what Lissa's unwitting probing had engendered before and he couldn't remember that either, neither the circumstances nor the time frame, nothing at all. He ran through the inventory of personal memories left to him. Her soft human fingers had seemed so small and weak and she'd used them very gently, almost tenderly. Was it just that it'd been a woman's hands on him that troubled him so? No, of course not. He loved having females touch him. And in any case she'd acted as a physician should, her conduct entirely professional, and he'd never minded medical staff of either sex handling him before.

Well, he'd probably remember sooner or later. In the meantime, he'd been tasked with a new system and species to conquer, five heavily populated planets in all, the lot of them rich with mineral resources, the outermost planets and some of the moons equally promising yet still untapped. His latest intelligence indicated that the system inhabitants were fighters who'd been swift to protect their wealth before. Grievous's troops would get a good workout this time.

The instant the cyborg's thoughts swung onto the subject of formulating battle plans, all his distress and unhappiness, his vague confusion and turmoil vanished as if a relay had suddenly switched over in his mind and he forgot all about it. He stepped forward and began to pace, his attention redirected, looking through the viewports at his ships keeping station nearby and pondering how best to use them and all the other forces under his command. The memory he'd been struggling for, that of his infant children happily gurgling as they patted over his part-closed eyes and cheeks with their tiny hands when he put his face down close to them, sank safely back beyond retrieval once more. He'd become General Grievous the Supreme Commander and Separatist leader and Jedi-killer again. Nothing else.

While Grievous strode about his quarters and contemplated the logistics of waging war, his personal physician went about her own business many decks below him. She'd decided to tarry awhile, since she was aboard anyway, and have a look at the classified data she'd just uploaded into her office computer. She went to the nearby mess to get a big cup of the hot beverage the Neimoidians favoured and which had who-knew-what in it—she sure didn't because she'd learned early on never to inquire about the actual composition of any Neimoidian food—returned to her office, settled comfortably in at her work station, and pulled up one of the new files, a huge one full of graphics. Finally, a detailed three-dimensional look at exactly what had been done to the General to integrate his droid components and the command center of his remaining organic self! She'd only gotten to see his brain's surface features to date, nothing of what was going on within the tissues themselves.

She studied the 3-D scans of the right hemisphere first, the side where the most elaborate implants had been sited. Now and then, she referenced her implant schematics and mapping charts of normal Kaleesh brain function to keep straight in her own mind how the various alien workings were arranged, and soon had a good grasp of how his motor functions were being channelled and augmented. She looked over the left side scans next, not so much going on over there, just a lot of hard-wired connections snaking away down into the cylindrical housing that also contained his spinal cord and the big blood vessels servicing his brain and facial remnants. There looked to be a little scarring damage just beneath the surface, too, and then some more, showing up like tiny dark nodules. Odd… And here was another one, suspended as though—

Lissa suddenly sat up much straighter. She rotated the graphic until it presented a dorsal view and stacked a batch of the upper horizontal cross sections, superimposing them. Two tight clusters of the nodules now showed, several dozen in all. She consulted her charts again. The spots were concentrated in the areas listed as pertaining to memory and aggression.

The woman drummed her fingers against the sides of her keyboard. Well, this was certainly strange. There was no possibility that the damage was random, not with such precise patterning evident when one saw it all at once. She tried to get a better enlargement of one of the nodules and it still looked exactly like what she'd thought it was, just a knot of scar tissue, almost spherical in form, and very small. If it'd been on the surface instead of within the tissues, even Nagas probably wouldn't have bothered removing it when he did his occasional organic scrub-work on Grievous's brain. She supposed it must have something to do with the cyborg's integration into his current form, yet honestly, what could deliberate damage to his memory have to do with learning to operate a droid body? Maybe he'd experienced some horrible trauma before his operation that had psychologically crippled him so badly that repressing certain events was the only way to heal him. She was just guessing, though. And it didn't explain the scarring elsewhere.

Something else to ask the Geonosians about, Lissa decided. They obviously didn't mind her knowing since she'd been cleared to look at the data. There was probably a perfectly good explanation for what she saw that had to do with Grievous's Kaleesh neurology.

She resecured the files and packed it up a while later and returned to the droid tender until she next had to report for battle duty. It would be the battle Grievous had been thinking on even as she was making her discoveries, finalizing his campaign plans with his damaged mind.

TBC


	8. The Futility Of Being Earnest

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 8 – The Futility Of Being Earnest

Lissa got a good chance to bring up the topic of Grievous's mind alterations just a few days later when the biodroid team received a new shipment from Geonosis of what were always euphemistically labelled as 'biological specimens', but which she knew were really the salvaged body parts of unfortunate Geonosians that had been humanely put down. The latest collection included a great many entire brains, some complete with spinal cords, being kept alive in stasis, which Nagas the Patriot had specifically requested for some experimental new weapons droid designs he was tinkering with, and as he and Attenbro happily—and Lissa not so happily—sorted through the fresh organs, it seemed perfectly apropos for the human to suddenly exclaim, "Sa-ay, this reminds me, I was going to ask you to clarify something I saw in General Grievous's brain scans."

"Of course," Nagas said cheerfully. "Ask all you want."

"It's to do with the scarring in his left hemisphere, in part of his memory center. Was that to excise some bad experiences he had before you rebuilt him?"

"Oh, that. No, we did that to suppress most of his personal memories. It keeps him more focused on his work."

"He work hard and longer, too," added Attenbro, whose spoken Basic was not as good as that of his superior, but who understood the common language perfectly well. "No sleep no more."

"Yes," Nagas continued, "that was an unexpected bonus. We're still not entirely sure why it happened, but suspect we inadvertently turned off his abstract creative processes too when we altered his memories. Whatever it was, it must have been involved in regulating his sleep cycle. I don't think he's slept since, has he, Attenbro?"

"Rest, sometimes, like a Geonosian. I see him stand once with eyes empty for one, two minutes. But never see him sleep, no, always conscious."

"I see," said Lissa slowly. "So he's not aware of his past, or—?"

"Oh no, no, he knows perfectly well where he comes from, what he did before, that he has a family…all the basics are still there. He just doesn't…dwell on it. Think about it."

"Thinks only of his job now. Fighting. Killing enemies," said Attenbro.

"And so he should," said Nagas. "The rest is just a waste of time for someone like him to think about, anyway."

Lissa smiled and nodded her head thoughtfully. "Well, that's very interesting," she remarked in a chipper tone. Privately, she was appalled by what the Geonosians were relaying to her, but would of course never admit to it. "And the alterations you did to his aggression center," she went on, "that must've been to make him meaner then, is that right?"

Both Geonosians started laughing uproariously. "Meaner! Oh no!" Nagas exclaimed when he'd calmed down and could talk again. "He was already mean when we got him. And vicious! All the Kaleesh, the males, they're like that, just very aggressive, very violent people. All we had to do was remove most of his ability to control it."

"We remove too much at first, almost. The time he go crazy in the arena."

Nagas laughed again. "He is referring to when Grievous was first learning to use his new body and fight," he said in response to Lissa's baffled, inquisitive look. "He was doing well against droids and we decided to try him against some of our Gladiators for the first time, in our arena at Stalgasin. We were all there with Count Dooku. And Grievous starts, using the same sabers the Gladiators use, and whoosh! Kills one Gladiator right away. Dooku, he says, pit him against more opponents, and we do. Grievous fights two, no problem. Kills them both very fast. Then Dooku wants to see him use all four arms. That was a little harder for him. He was still learning, not so well coordinated yet, and Dooku—what did Dooku say to him? Do you remember?"

"He say, all this time and money we put in you and still you fight like the battle droid."

"Yes, that's right! And Grievous, he begins to shake, he is so mad, and then he jumps at the Gladiators and suddenly everything works for him and he starts to move so fast we can't even see it, he's like a dust whirl, the arms flying, and cuts everyone to pieces in seconds. And then he turns to us and doesn't stop—oh no! Well, you never saw a bunch of Aristocrats find their wings so fast, even the ones who hadn't flown for months! Grievous, he's just wild now, in bloodlust, the eyes burning like fire. We had some service drones with us and you know how stupid they are. They just gawk at him until he runs up and kills them too, and then two picadors—no, wait, one was fast enough to fly off—but he got the other one, and even killed their orrays. Then it's just Dooku still standing there and Grievous is so crazy by now that he can't even think, all he wants to do is kill something, and he starts for the Count. And that Dooku, he just waits, very calm, until Grievous is almost on him, and then he throws the Sith spark—"

"Lightning!"

"Lightning," Nagas amended, "at Grievous and knocks him off his feet and down onto the ground. Grievous, he gets up again, no weapons anymore, but he doesn't care. He wants to tear Dooku apart! And the Count has to shock him and throw him down again! Four times he has to do that before Grievous gets his mind back and stays down on the ground, then Dooku goes to him and pulls him up by one arm and tells him, you stand and stay there, you! Grievous is so addled by the Sith lightning he can hardly keep his feet. He's weaving back and forth, the eyes rolling, almost falling, but he does obey. That was the first time we thought it was safe to go back down again."

"I go down," Attenbro said, jerking his snout flippantly. "You take your time, I remember."

Nagas chuckled. "Could you blame me? So, we go up to Dooku. There are bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. Grievous is still swaying and a terrible mess, covered with sand and blood—you can hardly see anymore that his armour is white. I was mortified, of course. Grievous is my creation, my responsibility, and I say to Dooku, Count, I am so sorry. We'll get right back in there and remove some of the blocks so he can better control himself. And Dooku, he just starts to laugh and says back, no no, you leave him be, he'll learn, this is just the way I want him, and…well, we did. And Count Dooku was right in the end. Grievous did learn to control himself well enough after all. Is there anything else you wanted to know about his brain scans?"

"Actually," Lissa said after a pause, her voice a little faint, "I think I've heard about all I need to for now. Thank you very much for telling me this." And for once the sentiments with which she addressed her Geonosian colleagues were completely sincere.

The subject of their talk had, in the meantime, continued doing just what he was supposed to be doing, working hard on his next task, the subjugation of an entire multi-planet system, which was shaping up into a potentially major campaign. Grievous had his own ideas of how to best accomplish his goal and for once requested reinforcements to his fleet, which Dooku authorized after listening to his plans. But their arrival would take time, and Grievous chafed over the delay, keeping himself occupied by haunting the operations center aboard the Invisible Hand day and night, and training his elite MagnaGuards to ever more proficient levels of personalized expertise. There was only one notable occurrence that distracted him any as the days went by, and it was an important one, which would have consequences for the Republic side. A far-ranging flight patrol of his intercepted another diplomatic vessel, a genuine one this time. What attracted the General's attention and his ire was that the ship also had aboard four Jedi who claimed diplomatic immunity because they'd been employed as neutral observers for a civil matter that had nothing to do with the Clone Wars.

Grievous ordered his droids to isolate the Jedi in a large contained area despite their protestations and rushed over in his fastest suitable frigate with a large contingent of bodyguards and soldiers to set things straight. Jedi claiming to be neutral, he'd never heard of anything so preposterous! His general orders were to still acknowledge genuine political neutrality for now whenever it was somebody that the Separatists didn't care about or have any use for, and he already suspected that the ship itself was legit since it had virtually no weaponry and had acquiesced to his patrol's demands for identity and to allow boarding without protest—but these Jedi! It couldn't be allowed. It was as crazy as if he'd been the one aboard the diplomatic ship, claiming to be neutral and an observer to a boarding party of Republic forces!

He found that his pilots had actually managed to get the Jedi down into a small empty cargo bay where they seemed to be waiting under the impression that they were going to negotiate with him on the matter of their neutrality. He shattered that notion fast as soon as he entered by deploying his troops about them in an encircling ring, leaving a big open space in the middle. The Jedi drew themselves up a little, made nervous by the sudden unexpected appearance and show of serious force, yet still maintaining their air of smug superiority which he hated so much as the four of them stood there together, trusting in their belief that their way was the only way and that the Force could guide them out of any mishap. It was a faith which Grievous thought hypocritical and sickening.

Neutral they might claim to be, but they knew him all right, and when he stepped out into the open, into the area left clear in the center of the circle, one of the Jedi, a female Twi'lek, came forward to meet him. She walked with quiet courage, ignoring the encircling droids, her dark eyes fixed only on him. Grievous halted and waited. Whenever he suspected that he'd have to spring into action without delay, he affixed several lightsabers to his waist instead of keeping them in their usual sleeve pockets in the lining of his cloak, the better to enable him to snatch and activate the weapons fast. He already had a pair of them waiting thus on this occasion and his hands hovered, ready to grab, fingers twitching a little as the lithe alien approached him.

She halted herself just outside the range of his normal reach and bowed her head. "General Grievous," she acknowledged.

The cyborg said nothing in reply. The grisly faux face seemed to her expressionless, impossible to analyze. He merely stared back at her out of eyes as flat and cold as the deck they stood on, and his droid hands jittered by his artificial sides, trembling almost. The Jedi sent out her will, trying to read him, and was instantly blasted by a furious loathing, wave after wave of it, roiling past her like a thick miasma, and her soul quailed under its terrible intensity. She swiftly withdrew her tentative probe, horrified and badly rattled. Was this all that still lived in the creature, just hatred and rage?

It was immeasurably harder to meet his gaze again, knowing that he hated her so. "You must have confirmed by now that we are on a diplomatic vessel," the Twi'lek continued, still striving for calm and reason. "Our mission is peaceful, our intent neutral. We have no quarrel with you on this occasion, General."

"A diplomatic vessel, yes. No quarrel…" And here his eyes seemed to come alive after all, blazing suddenly with the same monstrous passion she'd sensed within. "I have a quarrel. With you, Jedi! With all of you."

"Surely we can come to some agreement—"

"No. No! No negotiations! Never! Not with you!" he cried hoarsely, and his control broke and his hands flicked upward. He couldn't help himself. It was impossible for him to have a Jedi stand before him for long and not act to destroy. His two ignited lightsabers traced slow arcs in the air before the Twi'lek's face. She recognized the distinctive soft violent spear of the weapon that had once belonged to Jedi Master Thur Megia, who'd been a friend, and her apprehension and sorrow deepened.

"Fight me, Jedi," Grievous commanded.

"I won't take part in this."

"You refuse my challenge?"

"It's not a challenge. It's a depravity."

The General's burning yellow eyes blinked, once, twice. His arms drew back and down, slowly, and he deactivated his weapons. He began to step backward, retreating into the circle of his droids again. The Jedi woman, once again standing all alone, jerked up her lovely head, her own eyes suddenly widening as though she too were receiving the silent orders the cyborg passed to his troops, but not in time to defend herself when they opened fire.

Grievous watched as the concentrated blaster barrage reduced the Twi'lek's body into a charred, bloodied carcass, disgusted by the look of shocked surprise that she wore until she fell. Had she thought he was bluffing? That she could talk her way out of her fate? Idiot! He was equally repulsed by the aghast expressions he registered on the remaining Jedi, the way one of them yelped when the Twi'lek was first shot. Did they really not get it yet or understand that he meant to eliminate them all? More imbeciles! Perhaps it was time to send a message that even the most doddering member of their Order could comprehend.

He strode back into the open space and over to the still-quivering corpse. The Jedi's lightsaber had fallen out of its holster and rolled a little distance away from the body. He grabbed it up and found that it had escaped being damaged, rather surprisingly, and produced a bright blue beam when he turned it on. He stared over at the Jedi that were still alive as he manipulated the slender hilt with his duranium fingers, getting a feel for the weapon's heft and handle.

"A passable trophy," he proclaimed at last, "even if its owner was a pacifist coward."

The taunt had the desired effect. One of the younger Jedi, the dark-skinned humanoid male who had cried out, abruptly pulled out his own lightsaber and started for him. The other male in the group, older, bearded, tried to stop him.

"Wanli! Hold!"

"But he'll kill us anyway," the dark-skinned one half-sobbed.

Tears were streaming down the young man's face. The Twi'lek must've been his master, Grievous thought, observing their dissention with pleasure. "You should listen to the padawan," he called over to them. "Not much of a death, to lay down your arms to be slaughtered like sheep. What would your Order think of warriors that chose such a disgraceful end?"

The bearded man regarded him sadly.

"Is that what you think we are, Grievous? Warriors? We're peacekeepers."

"Soothing semantics," the cyborg sneered. "I've seen your work."

"You don't even understand the difference anymore, do you?"

"Enough blather! Prepare yourself, Jedi. I'm going to kill you. Whether that happens in combat or as an act of butchery is now up to you."

To emphasize his words, Grievous reached up with his free hand to unhook his cape and cast it off, a gesture of both seriousness and contempt. The contempt lay in the two lightsabers he'd not touched yet which he threw aside with his cloak. He expected that three of his weapons should suffice, the pair he still wore at his waist and the new one he'd just taken from the Twi'lek woman. One lightsaber for each Jedi he meant to destroy. He thought it a generous allowance and far more than they deserved, that he was still willing to deal with them personally at all instead of leaving them to the untender mercies of his mechanized soldiers.

The older Jedi still seemed disinclined to fight, but had lost control of the others, both of whom now had their lightsabers out. Grievous slid sideways, partially circling them, testing them, watching their responses carefully. They both moved like amateurs, their inexperience showing, and the second one, another dark-skinned humanoid, female this time, wore a ridiculously elaborate headpiece and heavy robes that would surely hinder her even further—stupid of her. He concluded that he would have no trouble whatsoever dispatching them.

Grievous abruptly quit his probing, reared up to his full height, and cracked his left arm apart into two limbs. He used them to reactivate the weapons he wore at his waist with a flourish, and the young Jedi flinched back, obviously fearful of his suddenly changed aspect. The older Jedi continued to merely watch, and so did the General's droids, silent, impassive spectators all. Grievous played to them a little nonetheless, blandishing his trio of lightsabers and stepping lightly, strutting almost, as he postured. He rarely had an audience when murdering his most hated foes and was still vain enough to enjoy an opportunity to show off his prowess.

On any other occasion Grievous wouldn't have even bothered with the padawans, would have simply slaughtered them at once with a swipe or two and concentrated on their masters, if any such accompanied them. He didn't even value their lightsabers as trophies and only collected them for reasons of updating his tally. This time would be different. Their bodies, once he was through with them, would serve as his statement and warning.

He lunged forward and clashed with both at once in a flurry of thrusts and feints. They were slow, so slow, and confused by his use of all three weapons, and he easily left them reeling and cut and wide-eyed with fright and shock. Another quick dart and he wounded them again, a shallow slash to the male's chest and a rip through the female's robes and the flesh on her thigh. The older Jedi started and swore and called both padawans in to him, unable to stay uninvolved any longer.

"Wanli! Lu-matra! Fall back! Regroup on me."

The two did as told, finally, the woman limping badly as she fell in behind her master. Their gasping breaths sounded loud in the sudden stillness of the cargo bay, punctuated only by the metallic tac-tac-tac of their enemy's footfalls as he paced before them and waited. The older Jedi looked upon the cyborg with utter revulsion.

"Why are you doing this?" he exclaimed. "What kind of a monster are you?"

"One made to exterminate you," Grievous said.

The older Jedi's sudden participation and attempt to rally the padawans instantly heightened the challenge they posed and Grievous returned to the fight with renewed relish. Experience had already taught him that the more reluctant the Jedi appeared to be at first to engage him, the better opponents they usually turned out to be…strange. He glided in closer to them, still moving with needless exaggeration, weaving and swaying, torn between his driving need to kill and his desire to prolong the affair and enjoy the rare pleasure he took in his new body's dreadful efficiency. The youngsters were now terrified of him. They knew there was no escaping him and that they'd soon be dead. Grievous saw it all when he looked into their eyes and more besides, and he enjoyed that part of it too.

The young man died quickly through his own stiff clumsiness when he stumbled forward into another saber swing Grievous aimed at his belly. The cyborg rumbled angrily at that, a sound midway between a snort of disgust and a low growl. He'd meant only to wound him again. The other padawan didn't last much longer, even with her master's futile efforts to guard her. One of the seared injuries Grievous had inflicted before opened further as she staggered about and she began to bleed out, and the deck was soon smeared with her blood, slippery enough underfoot that Grievous became glad that he'd activated the magnetic option in his feet to hold him fast against any sly Force tricks the older Jedi might try, even though it somewhat stilted his movements. Eventually, she became so weak that she could no longer even hold her lightsaber aloft, could only stand helpless, panting and trembling. Grievous eyed her and her protector with disdain. The older Jedi had proven to be almost useless, no real fight in him at all, doing nothing but getting in the cyborg's way and acting defensively.

"Leave her! She's done," Grievous ordered, standing down and coming to a halt himself. "You're a poor opponent, Jedi. I expected better of you."

"I'm happy to disappoint you," the man replied.

"I'll give you one last chance to redeem yourself. You and I, a proper match, if you're capable. An honourable death by my blade, Jedi. Better that than the droids."

"What of my padawan?"

"She's dead already."

The man turned his head to look over his shoulder at her. The woman stood slumped, on the point of collapse. "Lu-matra?" he said softly. "I'll see you in a few moments. You understand."

"Yes, Master," she whispered.

The Jedi drew himself up and slowly brought his lightsaber before his face into the same familiar vertical rest position Dooku had taught Grievous. About time, the cyborg thought, and stepped back to safely deactivate two of his own weapons and reintegrate his halved arms into a single limb. He began his own formal gesture to start the duel.

The Jedi whirled at once and slashed his blade through the neck of his padawan, beheading her, then completed his revolution and launched himself straight at Grievous without pause, aiming for his durasteel throat.

The cyborg's heightened reflexes saved him, his own lightsaber lashing out to knock the incoming weapon aside and out of the man's hand before he could reach him, standing firm as the humanoid body completed its leap and crashed into his own. He seized the Jedi's own throat with his free hand and threw him down head-first onto the floor so hard that he fatally crushed his skull and didn't even need a follow-up stab of his blade to kill the man, but he did it anyway, in a pure paroxysm of instant rage. He should have known that he couldn't trust the Jedi to behave honourably! Sneaking liars and scum, the lot of them! How he hated them all! He sliced through the fallen body once more, and then, for good measure and because it made him feel a little better, did it again. He went to the bodies of the padawans and mutilated them too, methodically, one after the other, until all the corpses lying on the deck of the cargo bay were a torn and shredded mess and his anger had receded, and his soldiers and bodyguards watched all the while with their blank, unfeeling, mechanical eyes.

Grievous marched up to the bridge of the ship and told the cowering captain that the next time he found Jedi acting as so-called neutral observers aboard any diplomatic vessel, that he'd kill said vessel's bridge crew along with the Jedi. If it happened again after that, he'd slaughter the entire ship's complement, one by one, and impound the ship as war booty. The captain said that he understood. Grievous left, satisfied and with four new lightsabers tucked into the sleeve lining of his cloak. The mutilated bodies of the weapons' former owners he left behind where they'd fallen.

The incident gave Grievous a good excuse to ignore his latest scheduled bacta treatment appointment and he finally presented himself to the Geonosian team on the droid tender a week later than he really should have, after putting it off for as long as he dared. A few days more, he knew from painful past experience, and the depleted nutrients and accumulating wastes contained within the fluid inside his chest would reach starvation and toxic levels respectively and he'd be forced to report in, ill and dizzy, whether he liked it or not. Nagas clucked over his tardiness, as usual, then sent him off to begin the procedure. He also sent along Lissa, to watch and learn. The Geonosian had suggested that since the General's new command ship had all the facilities he needed now, that Grievous utilize his personal physician to take over his routine maintenance in addition to her battle duties, and the cyborg had been agreeable to that. It would save him having to travel over to the tender at all anymore, and it would save Nagas, who was in truth getting a little bored with overseeing Grievous's everyday care and who wanted to save his time for his exciting new projects, from a lot of tedious nagging and coaxing of his temperamental creation.

Grievous had good reason to need coaxing. He'd come to hate his bacta treatments. He hated being cleaned up beforehand, when he had to suffer the humiliation of being treated exactly like a droid. He hated being in the tank itself, his chest opened up and his faceplate off, vulnerable for anyone to see. And he hated the aftermath, having to be hosed down again and dried, and then having his eyes and facial remnants inspected, and sometimes his brain too, whenever the Geonosians decided to have a look-see. Not that they ever cared how he felt about it, but Lissa, who was made of different stuff, saw at once how much he loathed the whole affair, and found herself growing sober and apprehensive at the thought of having to work with him alone when he was in such a state. Surely there had to be ways of making his necessary medical procedures more acceptable to him? He was a lousy enough patient already. She sure didn't need him aggravated anymore!

For now, however, all she could do was observe as he underwent a high-pressure wash in one of the same stalls used to clean, well, droids, then escort him down to the ship's infirmary where he was readied for his half-hour immersion in one of the healing bacta baths. He had to half-squat to fold himself up well enough to fit inside even the largest tank, and even though Lissa knew that such an awkward position did not discomfort him and that he could lock his body and maintain it forever, still, it made her uncomfortable to see him so and witness his plainly evident anger and embarrassment. Nagas saw it too, yet ignored it as a matter of course as he showed the woman how to use the robotic hands within the tank to undo the various stopcocks and fastenings and open up the General's chest to allow the fresh fluids to circulate freely and flush him out. The Geonosian, unlike Lissa, had a lengthy and more intimate frame of reference against which to judge the cyborg, and he considered that on this occasion that Grievous was actually behaving very well and calmly indeed…for Grievous.

They left the cyborg to stew alone for a while so Nagas could run his alien colleague through the maintenance schedules the Geonosian scientist had devised for Grievous, pointing out all the high priority checks that absolutely had to be performed and those that could be put off, if need be. Grievous was supposed to come in for a bacta treatment every two weeks. Lissa would be lucky, Nagas told her, if she could persuade him to show up every three weeks. The purely mechanical routine work didn't seem to bother him so much. He'd been pretty good so far about having his droid body serviced.

Lissa ventured to address the subject of Grievous's emotional health, which was still troubling her. "He seems so…so mad," she said.

"Oh, he's always that way," Nagas replied dismissively. "Just ignore it and be insistent. You'll have an advantage, too. He's more inclined to listen to a female."

He was? If so, it was news to Lissa. It also seemed to conflict with something else she remembered—hadn't Gregory said that his species was male-dominant? Something else to look up, she decided. She suspected she'd need all the help she could get in dealing with Grievous in the future, and it mightn't be a bad idea, she thought, to learn more about Kaleesh sociobiology and psychology in general.

Attenbro the Citizen and a couple of the other biodroid scientists meandered in later when Grievous was sitting in his special chair and Lissa was having her first go at examining and treating his exposed brain. They weren't quite as bored yet with the cyborg as was their boss and weren't about to miss their last chance to see how their work was holding up inside, and they leaned in to watch over the human's shoulders. Lissa's use of the fixed microsurgical laser instead of the usual handheld instrument seemed to amuse them and they cheerfully mistook her caution and desire for precision for uncertainty and began uttering their own observations and words of advice as she worked away, baldly issuing such statements as "Careful now." and "That bit there looks bad." At one point Attenbro said, "Oops," when she very carefully lasered away a tiny shred of tissue that sent up a perfectly normal little wisp of smoke, and they all started tittering. Lissa, her hands full, settled for glaring at them with some exasperation, although she also had to admit to herself that it was kind of funny, or would have been if poor Grievous hadn't been sitting there conscious and perfectly aware of everything that was happening to him and able to hear all they said the whole time.

He made eye contact with her only once, as she was refastening his face plate and held it briefly between her hands to ensure that it was properly centered on his head and secure, and the expression that flashed through his golden orbs when she looked back was even more disturbing to her than his anger, just a weary glum despair that reminded her of the way he'd wordlessly pleaded for help when he'd been badly injured on Shartil. She couldn't say anything in front of the Geonosians, but did try to convey to him with her own expression that things would be different the next time, that she'd try to make it easier for him from now on, and after a moment he looked away again.

As before, as soon as he'd been put back together and cleared to go, Grievous simply got up and began to leave without further looking at anybody or saying a word. Lissa, sensing an opportunity, suddenly excused herself and hurried out after him, into the corridor.

"General Grievous, sir? May I speak with you a moment, please?"

"Yes?"

He stood normally, waiting, the long face tilted to look down at her, as receptive as he was ever likely to get. "It's about my escorts, General," Lissa began.

"What of them?"

"Well, I still have them, that's just it. I don't mean the battle droids you assigned for when I'm on battle duty—I appreciate those. It's the ones I still need when I move around the droid tender or visit other vessels. It just seemed to me that if I'm going to be coming over to the Invisible Hand more often and sometimes on short notice to accommodate your schedule, that I'd be able to respond faster and more easily if I didn't have to wait for an escort all the time, and—and I am security-cleared now, after all, General, and—"

"You're right," Grievous interrupted. "You don't need an escort anymore."

"Oh! Really?" she exclaimed, happily.

The cyborg became cool and speculative as he continued gazing down at her. "Yes. Go to sickbay and tell them I've given you permission to have a transponder implanted instead."

"A—what?"

Lissa was appalled. Ships and droids had transponders. Even pets and valuable breed animals were sometimes fitted with transponders. But a person?

"But, sir, I don't—"

"The transponder or the escorts, it is your choice," he said roughly, then spun and stalked off by way of terminating any further discussion. The woman stared after him, quite dismayed. To think that she'd imagined she had a little rapport going with him!

In the end, Lissa decided to get the transponder. And came out of the infirmary afterwards wincing and cursing under her breath because the med aides had inserted the tiny disc under the skin on her back right between her shoulder blades where it would be the most difficult for her to reach and tamper with, or even scratch at while the incision healed.

TBC


	9. Revelations And Ruminations

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 9 – Revelations And Ruminations

The spot where Lissa's transponder had been inserted was still itching when Grievous's reinforcements finally arrived and he swung into battle mode. She was glad she had Trigger and Gregory with her as she and the Geonosians whose names had come up on the duty roster travelled over to the Invisible Hand to report in at their battle stations—both service droids made excellent backscratchers.

With so many vessels now under his command and after remaining in one location for so long, it'd been impossible for Grievous to keep the particulars of his fleet secret, but that didn't matter. He'd actually been counting on his intended victims discovering what was coming. The opponents he'd been plotting against were the Cervidians, a highly intelligent and industrialized species who'd fortuitously evolved within a system containing no less than five hospitable planets. All were generously laced with desirable minerals, endowed with oceans and continents draped with lush vegetation, the soil fertile, their climates mild. The Cervidians had populated them all over the centuries and now basked in their natural wealth, which they'd thus far had no trouble protecting. Grievous intended to change all that.

He made no attempt to hurry or conceal his actions once he'd set his fleet into motion. They approached the Cervidian system with leisurely confidence and even the General was impressed by the forces that were waiting for him, the size and scope of the Cervidian's own composite fleet. It would have been enough to repulse any covetous Outer Rim neighbour with ease. But they'd never fought a droid army, and they'd never encountered an opponent like Grievous.

The Cervidians had concentrated their defense before their original homeworld, the planet Cervidia. It was the largest and richest of their worlds, the seat of their government and economics, militarily the most vital, the most desireable. They naturally assumed that the enemy advancing on them would try to take it first, instead, they wound up watching flabbergasted as the Separatist ships deployed about the outermost and least developed of their inhabited planets, paying their homeworld no mind whatsoever. Their confusion and unease turned into shock and horror when the enemy ships began laying down a massive orbital bombardment, targeting the residential sections, sweeping slowly from west to east with every apparent intention of eventually encircling the entire globe.

The Cervidians hastily remustered their forces and raced to the rescue. Grievous sent his mechanized legions out to meet them. A short, vicious battle took place. The Cervidians were outnumbered and outgunned in every respect—they were soon forced to retreat, reeling. To demoralize them even further, Grievous sacrificed two Commerce Guild destroyers to take out the Cervidians' largest carrier and flagship, by ordering the destroyers to pursue and dash themselves into the carrier even though the Cervidian vessel had already turned around. The suicidal action frightened the remaining Cervidian commanders. They were just beginning to understand the full implications of fighting nonliving foes.

Grievous turned his attention back to the bombardment. He'd already learned that such actions were very effective in getting an enemy's attention and subduing them at the same time, and he was having very little trouble subduing this world, which had so few defences that he was even able to use his AGD frigates, the 'air-ground destroyers' that specialized in high-altitude precision bombing. Of course his lovely flagship, Invisible Hand, also played a role. He'd been looking forward to utilizing his vessel's full capacity ever since he'd taken command and was already very pleased by the amount of devastation the carrier-destroyer's turbolasers and ion cannons were inflicting. No spaceship yet built could destroy a world outright, but he thought that his Invisible Hand, based on what he was observing, could come close, that she had firepower enough to wipe a planetary surface clean all by herself if he were to carry out an attack long enough.

Grievous was only interested this time in depopulating his target while leaving its industrial facilities and resources standing as much as possible and called off the bombardment as soon as they'd achieved a good level of planetary saturation. They carried on to their second target, the next inhabited Cervidian world. Grievous had just finished getting his ships into position when he received the somewhat expected request from the Cervidians for a temporary ceasefire and parley.

Setting the meeting up got Lissa involved for the first time in her capacity as the token living member of General Grievous's staff. She was already feeling intimidated and anxious because of the fighting she'd been watching from her office, and when her quartet of battle droid bodyguards showed up at her door, she thought for one horrid moment that she was going to have to go down to the new planet that Invisible Hand had taken station above. She wasn't at all sure at first what to make of Sunny's orders to take her up to Grievous's quarters, and pronto.

By the time she got up to the observation deck, she'd grasped that the people they were fighting had asked for a ceasefire to negotiate and that they were going to meet with Grievous aboard the Invisible Hand. Her apprehension shifted into keen interest. She'd never seen the cyborg like this, acting as a politician, and was thoroughly intrigued as she took her place as part of the regular parade scene she found set up in his quarters. Several ranks of additional battle droids stood to her left, a number of the fearsome MagnaGuards to her right. Grievous waited up on the walkway by the viewports at the front of the deck, as he'd once waited for her, to inform her that she was going to be his personal physician. He had a very cool, ominous air about him and Lissa thought that it would take a brave soul to meet that glittery golden gaze of his without flinching.

The Cervidians turned out to be small humanoid-formed bipeds with short, prettily blotched fur and snouted faces dominated by big dark eyes and large, mobile, almost circular ears set near the tops of their heads. The party they sent was made up of six individuals wearing simple, soft, earth-toned robes, the actual leaders, and another four clad in sturdier clothing and harnesses that hugged their bodies, ceremonial guards or perhaps even the pilot crew of the shuttle that had brought them over. They seemed hardly any bigger than Lissa as they filed past her across the well of Grievous's observation deck, their nervousness obvious, a couple with their mouths part-open in what were probably expressions of extreme anxiety. The General met them up on his walkway, slouched in his predatory pose, staring coldly with his yellow eyes. Even hunched over, he towered above them.

Lissa was just a little too far away to make out much of the conversation that ensued. There were a lot of broad abrupt gestures from Grievous as he first pointed towards her and the rest of his entourage, then out at space. The Cervidians were too soft-spoken to hear at all, or perhaps they were trying to mollify the cyborg by speaking quietly. They cringed almost, before him, and their ears stood straight up and turned a little sideways, so that they almost touched at the tips. Grievous darted his head out at them. Lissa could tell that his husky tone was lowering even further, becoming sarcastic. She picked up such phrases as "don't care if" and "not an option". The Cervidians became frantic. One of them stood in advance of the rest, pleading with Grievous. The cyborg reared up to his full height and glared down contemptuously. He looked big enough to stomp the small alien underfoot.

Grievous stepped closer to the viewports and gestured again, slapping one duranium palm against the transparisteel panes. Lissa remembered how he'd terrorized her the day he'd had her abducted and used the threat of destroying Marku to force her into compliance. A wave of sympathy for the Cervidians washed through her and she wished she could warn them to take the cyborg seriously, that he wouldn't bluff or allow for the slightest latitude. The lead Cervidian was still trying to plead with him. Grievous's voice rose and she could clearly overhear him giving the aliens an hour to make their decision. That said, he turned his back and refused to listen to any more. The battle droids that had escorted the Cervidians stepped up and made them leave, and they slunk out past Lissa again, crestfallen and miserable.

With the Cervidian party gone, Lissa and her battle droids were free to go. As they were walking back to her office down the main corridor, they heard a quick-cadenced rapping, then Grievous himself swept up from behind and past them, racing along with his running walk, gaiting up a storm with his feet flying and his grey and scarlet cape swirling in his wake. Likely going to the bridge, Sunny said, in response to Lissa's query, and she perked up and asked the droid officer to follow the cyborg, to see whether he couldn't get her onto the bridge too.

The guards readily let the human woman in once they'd identified her, and she stepped into the command center of the Invisible Hand for the first time. It made for just as impressive a sight as Grievous's observation deck, a multi-level, expansive space enclosed by a great horseshoe of angled viewports offering yet another dazzling view, the whole partially jutting out from the body of the carrier-destroyer like a separate prow. Battle droids manned most of the numerous stations, interspersed here and there with Neimoidian officers. Grievous was standing at the front of the bridge in the well by the viewports, his head just visible above the upper-level railing.

Lissa tried to remain unobtrusively in the background, but Grievous saw her, of course—he saw everything—and came gliding up fast, hunched over with his head down, as aggressive as she'd ever seen him. "What are you doing here?" he snapped, thrusting his face forward too close to her own.

"I'd like to observe you for a while in your normal work environment, General," she replied.

He blinked, taken aback, stared at her doubtfully a moment more, then spun around with a growly low grunt and what sounded uncomfortably like an alien curse and stalked away again. Lissa interpreted his loss of interest in her as permission to stay and sidled over to stand by the captain's chair. She'd been more than half expecting him to throw her out.

The Neimoidian Captain had witnessed their confrontation and regarded Lissa glumly. She didn't know him very well yet, had just exchanged a few nods and pleasantries in passing, yet he turned out to be unexpectedly confiding as they quietly discussed the cyborg together. "You probably deal with him when he's calmer," the Captain said, "but this is the only way we ever see him." Lowering his voice even further, he confessed, "We're all afraid of him."

It was easy for Lissa to understand why. Grievous was in a state, to put it mildly, pacing back and forth at the front of the bridge, dripping menace and angry impatience. He turned back onto the ramp accessing the entrance level of the command center and Lissa tensed as he approached again, thinking he'd decided to toss her after all. But no. He did an about-face a few strides away from the captain's chair and promptly sped back the way he'd come—he'd just expanded his pacing route. Over and over he did the same thing, stalking back and forth by the viewports, then a quick run up and down the ramp, then back to the viewports, and the longer Lissa watched him, the more disturbed she grew. This wasn't just walking about to kill time, it had become stereotypic behaviour, the sort of repetitive motions sometimes performed by stressed animals kept in confinement in a vain attempt to anaesthetize themselves against whatever it was they found intolerable. He wasn't even looking at anything. His eyes were blank whenever he did his one-eighty before the captain's chair, he was zoning out. After a few more go-rounds, he seemed to come out of it and began glancing over all the stations he passed as he strode along and paused on occasion to stare outside, taut and focused on where Lissa thought the Cervidian fleet might be, although she couldn't see it herself. Waiting—no, hoping—for the deadline to expire so he could resume his attack, no doubt. Lissa didn't want to be around when that happened. She'd seen enough.

She left before Grievous got his wish. The Cervidians remained uncommunicative and the deadline ran out, and seconds later, the General gave the order to open fire on the new planet. The Cervidian fleet tried again to stop the Separatist assault, desperately, and were repulsed with ferocious intensity, Grievous freely sacrificing his troops once more to take out several of the biggest enemy destroyers. They withdrew and regrouped a safe distance away, and the Separatist offensive continued all the while until the planet began to glow red in spots as the firestorms on the surface spread.

It was more than the Cervidians could bear, to watch another of their planets and millions more of their people burn. They agreed to surrender unconditionally. Grievous accepted their capitulation and soon earned himself much praise, from Count Dooku and even from Lord Sidious himself, who called to personally express his pleasure over the cyborg's speedy efficiency.

Lissa had watched the second bombardment too, with mixed emotions. She'd become keenly aware that she was in a unique position, able to watch history unfold with her own eyes, and was feeling badly confused as a result, unsure of what to think of all she was witnessing. She even tried tuning into the HoloNet News, the staple Republic broadcast that everyone, even the Separatists, seemed to listen to, for a fresh perspective, but soon turned it off again, sickened by the endless descriptions of atrocities and massacres and the terrible appellations applied to the man she'd been tasked to care for. The best way to handle it, she decided in the end, was to do as the Geonosians did, just focus on her work and not give any thought anymore to the morality or ethics of it all. And if she did think about it, to at least keep her mouth shut, to protect herself.

Not long after the Cervidian system had been conquered, Grievous threw Lissa for another loop by sending word that he wished to come in and undergo his routine bacta treatment several days early. "Oh, he definitely likes you!" Nagas exclaimed as the human was packing up to go over to the Invisible Hand, and Lissa, who was becoming quite fond of the Geonosian Patriot, gave him a mock frown and a playful thump on top of his knobbly head.

Grievous showed up at her office while she was still turning her equipment on and getting ready. "I must say, General," she told him, "that I'm both surprised and pleased to see you coming in so early."

The cyborg stood there in what she'd come to think of as his neutral stance, his body and head erect without being aggressively stretched upward and his legs set beneath himself without much angulation. It usually meant that he was in a neutral mood as well…usually.

"I've been called away for several weeks," he finally said after a long pause.

"Ah. And you don't perhaps want me along to…?"

"It's for administrative reasons. I won't be fighting."

The woman nodded. Well, that certainly explained it. She grabbed her padd and cheerfully said, "Okay then! Let's get started. First, with your permission, sir, I'd like to try going about this a little differently than you're used to. I found out that the Neimoidians have the facilities to give you a good cleanup right in their own medical bay. I'd like to take you there instead of down to the maintenance section, if you're willing. There's only one drawback, I'm afraid."

Grievous's eyes narrowed. "Go on," he said.

"Well, it's their autopsy room, General. Empty at the moment, of course, but if the location bothers you…"

She trailed off. The cyborg thought it over—she could almost see the gears spinning in his head. "No," he decided. "Proceed." In truth, her suggestion had amused him—what better place for a specialist dealer in death?—but she'd never know that.

She further endeared herself as soon as they got to the infirmary by savagely jerking her thumb at the medical staff in what was obviously a preplanned dismissing gesture. Grievous watched with satisfaction as the Neimoidian doctor and his two aides filed out, muttering. If the woman hadn't already arranged for their absence, he would have thrown them out himself.

The autopsy room turned out to be unexpectedly spacious. It appeared that even in death, Neimoidians were typically wasteful and hedonistic, Grievous thought with mild disgust. But the human was right—the space was sealed and equipped with drains and the appointments well suited to wash down his droid body. The hoses were all hand-helds, though, there was nothing automated. Did she mean for him to clean himself?

No. Lissa pulled down one of the water hoses, sprayed it into a sink until she'd adjusted the temperature and pressure to her liking, then turned to him expectantly. Grievous, resigned, let his body slump down and lowered his head. The Geonosians had sometimes had their drones clean him up this way back on Geonosis when he'd first been learning to fight again hand-to-hand and had often gotten filthy. They'd usually made a mess of things on top of just plain annoying him.

It quickly became apparent to him that such wouldn't be the case this time. The woman had evidently had some experience in these matters. Her technique was skilful and she followed an obvious routine, even cupping a hand over his eyes with automatic thoughtfulness when she sprayed his face, and afterwards sliding a couple of fingers in behind his neck struts to protect his breathing aperture in the same way. She seemed to be examining him too, running her fingers with practised care over his various parts to feel for tiny dings and deformities, scraping a bit with her fingernail on occasion if a spot didn't wash off immediately, just getting to know what was unique and normal for the machine body he now lived in. Grievous, always touchy and tense about people taking liberties with his personal self since his resurrection as a cyborg, began to relax, reassured by her competence. She didn't try to engage him in useless conversation in an effort to be friendly or to cover up any nervousness while she went about her business and her handling of him was thorough, yet not too familiar. Something he could tolerate, in short.

Having his droid components touched wasn't the same as having what remained of his organic self examined, yet Grievous again got the sense of having experienced something similar as Lissa continued working on him. Nothing troubling or disturbing this time, just that nagging familiarity. He looked down at the human curiously, trying to remember, and when she bent over to look at his feet and tugged a little on the back of one hock joint to let him know she wanted him to lift the foot up, to look at its underside, it abruptly came to him. Why, she wasn't cleaning him, she was grooming him, just as he'd once groomed the elch gelding he'd so loved to ride when he was still a boy! A clear bright image suddenly sprang up, escaping out of his fractured store of memories. Flok, his name had been, a light tan with smutty brown legs, the first really good purebred animal he'd ever owned. On sweltering days, he'd sometimes ridden him bareback down to the cove from which his clan drew its name and gotten Flok to go in swimming, and afterwards had been a good time to trim the elch's big blunt claws because the tough horn was made a little softer by the water and easier to pare. Flok always tried to lean on him when he was stooped over holding one of the gelding's feet in his hands, and Grievous always wound up cussing him out for his rotten manners and threatening all sorts of dire punishments which he of course never carried out. Flok had been a wonderful companion, an excellent hunting steed, fast and brave, and when Grievous went off for officer training and had no time for him anymore, he'd sold him to one of his friends, who had delighted in the elch's company in turn. Good old Flok…how could he have forgotten about him for so long? And if ever Grievous wanted a testament to how strange his altered existence had become, this now had to be it, that he could equate standing in the autopsy room of a sickbay aboard a Neimoidian space cruiser, an alien woman sluicing water over his raised metal foot, with memories of grooming the favourite mount of his youth on Kalee.

When Lissa switched over to the air hose, to give him a cursory drying prior to his entering the bacta tank, she apologized for having taken so long and explained that she'd also been performing the exterior inspection of his droid components which was normally done as part of his monthly mechanical check—it'd just seemed an opportune chance, given that she was going over him anyway, and she hoped he wouldn't mind that she was trying to amalgamate some of his routines to save him time later on. Grievous replied that he didn't mind at all, so mildly that she looked hard back at him, wondering what was up with him now. She doubtfully settled for believing that having a nice warm leisurely hand-washing for once in place of the driving cold all-over spray of one of the automated wash stalls must've put him in a good mood. Maybe.

The rest likewise went well. He didn't seem half as upset as before, being in the tank, and was agreeable later to letting her preventatively treat his eyes and surrounding flesh again and hardly fussed at all, just jerked his head in tiny increments now and then when she rubbed the cream into his skin as though she'd struck a nerve. Everything looked to be in good condition and the pale scar over his cut had coloured up so well that she couldn't even find it anymore. She felt happy as could be when she finished and sent him off, and Grievous seemed satisfied too. She'd fully expected him to be a real terror about resisting the changes she'd had in mind and hopelessly antsy about having his body touched, and it was a huge relief to her that he hadn't been difficult at all. True, he still hadn't expressed a wit of gratitude or interacted any more than he absolutely had to, but it was a start, she knew now that he could be civil if he wanted to, and that something still resided in him that could respond to simple courtesy and kindness.

The General went off the next day to attend whatever it was that required his presence and Lissa used the lull during his absence to finally try and get a handle on what his species was all about. The information she was able to dig out, however, turned out to be frustratingly sparse. It seemed that the Kaleesh weren't exactly major players in the galactic scheme of things. They weren't even members of the Confederacy, just listed as friendly neutrals, and the only thing of theirs that the Separatists had ever had the slightest interest in seemed to be Grievous himself. They shared an uncommonly large solar system with one other sentient species known as the Huk, long-time rivals and on-again, off-again enemies of the Kaleesh, which the CIS was currently classifying as hostile due to some previous unspecified dealings with the Republic. Lissa was willing to bet that if she could access a Republic database, she'd find the designations exactly reversed—there, the Huk would be the friendly ones, the Kaleesh the hostiles.

All the rest was strictly tourist stuff. The Kaleesh were described as homeothermal, humanoid-patterned, live-bearing, hairless bipeds, intelligent yet barbaric in their social habits, who established dominance orders to determine status and who lived in low tech, well-structured clans…she knew that already. The only surprise was discovering how sexually dimorphic they really were, the mature males towering over the much smaller, sleeker females and equipped with purely masculine, wickedly large claws and hyperdeveloped lower canine teeth. It was a trait expressed to a degree that was rare in humanoids and which suggested that Grievous had not been built extra-large after all, that he might have been naturally big and tall. She could find nothing about whether the men ever actually used their fearsome accoutrements or whether it was all just for show, just that the fighting for dominance during their turbulent adolescence did apparently get serious enough on occasion for participants to kill each other. Either way, Grievous, who'd achieved his high-status rank long before he'd ever worked for the Separatists, must've been a pretty formidable and impressive-looking example of his kind, and Lissa regretted not being able to find a single image of him as he was when fully organic.

There was very little else of note. The males did hold all the political power, they were the dominant sex, just as Gregory had related, yet she also found a curious statement near the very end of her search which supported Nagas's assertion. Just seven brief words—'males typically defer to females by instinct'—and nothing more, no clue as to when such deferral took place or under which circumstances or what it consisted of. More frustration… Lissa thought about going to the Geonosians for further help, but sensed that doing so would be dangerous. She was supposed to be looking after Grievous's medical and mechanical needs alone, and they'd already given her all the information she would ever need to do that, all his personal schematics and records and a full library of Kaleesh physiological data. Anything else was something she clearly wasn't meant to concern herself with, and she suspected that even good-natured Nagas would regard her with suspicion should she start fishing around for more about the cyborg's former personal life.

She didn't even consider going straight to the source. Even if Grievous had once been of a disposition inclined towards answering her queries, it was ruined now, and his memory was too messed up by the sounds of it to be reliable anyway...if he could remember anything at all.

Lissa finally gave it up and turned back to her medical information. She had plenty of that, all she'd ever want to know about how Kaleesh bodies worked and how their brains functioned. What she didn't know, and still didn't, was what it was they liked to do with those bodies or what they liked to think about.

She didn't see Grievous again until after he'd returned and the biodroid team got a quick call-out a few days later in aid of a brief bout of fighting on a very small planetoid. It seemed too little a world to even have an atmosphere, yet it did, and Lissa wound up going down to experience it first hand. She had to go and sign out some cold-weather gear first. The planetoid had a temperate climate for the most part and the area they were landing in was undergoing its early winter.

The shuttle she and her usual four protectors plus several squads of regular battle droids rode down in deployed them on a low rise on plains near some hills in the middle of nowhere. Grievous and a half-dozen of his MagnaGuards and some of his droid officers were already there with their own shuttle, one especially equipped to act as a forward command post for small scale operations. They stood outside in the snow together, all of them intently focused on a particular range of hills some several kilometres off, yet try as Lissa might, she couldn't see a thing worth looking at. It wasn't until Sunny, her battle droid officer, told her that Grievous was coordinating a raid meant to take out a hidden base of organized mercenaries suspected of being friendly to the Republic that she began to understand what was going on.

The action finally got underway with the arrival of a number of troop and equipment transports, overseen by droid gunships and a squadron of mixed types of air machines. The base was sited within a system of vast caves with one major entrance facing off to their right, well dug in and difficult to get at. Sunny informed Lissa that Grievous was ordering a chemical attack to try and drive some of the defenders at the entrance back long enough to give the transports a chance to deploy and get the troops and their machinery inside. There was supposed to be a huge stockpile of weaponry and explosives within the base. Grievous was hoping to capture it and some of the mercenaries, to better learn who'd been supplying them. The CIS didn't need a fledgling Republic movement springing up in their own Outer Rim backyard.

Luck wasn't with the Separatists on this day, however. A number of droids did get inside, but were then stymied by savage resistance. They needed heavier ordnance to advance further, a few well-aimed concussion bombs from one of the gunships perhaps, yet Grievous was reluctant to authorize it—he wanted to take the base intact, if possible. He decided to give it some time, to try and wear the defenders down first.

As battles went, it was the most restrained, remote one Lissa had been involved in yet and she and the others at the command post were never in any real danger. It wasn't very cold, only a few degrees below freezing, and the big red sun was shining, and she was warm and cozy enough in her parka and lined boots that it turned into a rather pleasant outing for her as the day wore on, not much to do but watch the air cover cruise about and watch Grievous and his guards and wait for something to happen. By mid-afternoon, the sunshine started kicking off some convective activity, and the scattered cloud dotting the sky soon thickened up into great individual towering cumulus clouds generating heavy flurries. Some of the snow showers began marching their way. Lissa hadn't experienced a snowfall in years. It became almost exhilarating, to watch the grey veils come in and then wrap about them in a swirl of heavy wet flakes that would gust through their post with brief fury and reduce their visibility to almost nil; then, a few minutes later, the flurry would move off and the sun reappear. The droids bore it all stoically, as droids always did, standing like statues whenever the snow beat at them, quickly becoming encrusted on whatever sides were exposed to the prevailing wind. Only the rippling capes of the MagnaGuards and Grievous remained free of being temporarily enshrouded.

The snow accumulated differently on the cyborg than on his droids. His chest and skull and the mask about his eyes were warmed by the heated fluids and blood-heat within, and the flakes that struck him there melted at once and ran in little rivulets down his face and the front of his body between his chest plates. Sometimes he'd lift a hand up to his head to wipe clean his sensor panels or his vocabulator, where the snow did stick. Lissa, watching, wondered if the precipitation was fuzzing up his built-in antennae's reception.

The weather did nothing to interfere with the attack on the base and the stalemate continued. Towards evening, as Lissa was sipping at a canteen full of hot java juice, she thought her vision must finally have gone from the hours of watching—one of the hillsides suddenly seemed to slump and flatten out. She was about to try rubbing at her eyes when a rolling roar washed over her like distant thunder and the ground underfoot began to vibrate, and she understood then that she hadn't been seeing things at all. Sunny told her that the rebels had just blown up their weapons stockpile rather than let it fall into enemy hands.

"So that's why Grievous didn't take part in the action!" Lissa exclaimed.

"Yes," said Sunny. "That's why the General didn't take part."

The collapse of the cavern system had taken out over two hundred Separatist droids as well as whatever mercenaries were still inside when they'd destroyed themselves. No matter. There were always plenty of droids. The only irreplaceable individual on scene was still standing safe and secure, albeit disappointed, on a snowy rise overlooking the battle's sudden conclusion.

Once he'd called back his own troops and what could be salvaged of any that'd been damaged, Grievous ordered one of his AGD frigates to lay down a quick precision carpet bombing to ensure that the base was utterly finished and anything left alive annihilated. To make sure that it could not be scavenged by any hostiles after they'd left, he had several gunships saturate the ground with a long-acting biochemical agent that would sicken or kill most organics on contact unless they were wearing self-contained protective suiting. Lissa stayed on and watched it all happen, thoughtfully. Grievous might have had his mind scrambled in some respects, but when it came to getting his job done, his thinking was nothing if not thorough.

The fleet was underway again before nightfall. Lissa, who'd returned to the droid tender, was off-duty and yawning her way through the last few pages of a tech journal and thinking about hitting the sack, when she got a message that General Grievous wanted her back so he could undergo his latest bacta treatment ASAP, he'd be too busy tomorrow and for a while afterwards to keep his scheduled appointment. A new assignment must've just come his way, she thought as she scrambled about, looking for a decently clean pair of coveralls to wear, and felt quite grateful that at least he hadn't gotten his orders in the middle of the night.

It was so late nonetheless that there was no need to chase away any Neimoidians this time—the infirmary was already unmanned for the night until the following morning. Grievous stood quietly for Lissa again throughout his wash. Her apprehension of him had eased considerably over the past several weeks and this time she relaxed too and took some pleasure in her task in addition to just trying to complete it to the best of her ability. Grievous's design still delighted her. It was such a perfect meld of form and function, all the different, specialized components fitting together just so, and her hands began going over the curved, beautifully worked metal and duranium surfaces with real enjoyment as she cleaned them off. When she got to the cyborg's arms, she felt safe in holding his own hand briefly in her own, one after the other, to check on the functioning of all the intricate joints of his fingers and also just to admire them, as she'd once admired his construction when she'd had him lying on the floor of her workshop-lab on Marku. She hid a bit of a smile as she inspected the fine digits and remembered. Who'd have guessed that the nasty creature she'd met back then would ever allow her to go over him like this voluntarily? She suspected that Grievous would still fire her out the nearest airlock, though, if he ever learned how thoroughly she'd examined and scanned him while she'd had him unconscious and at her mercy, so to speak.

Lissa reviewed her information about his brain's normal functioning and its enhancements and alterations while he stood immersed in the bacta tank. Nagas had recommended that she have a look inside his skull every second time he came in for his bacta treatment. It was just under a year since he'd been operated on and his mind was still recovering from the medical outrage done to it, still prone to bouts of inflammation and localized infection in trying to reject all the hardware that'd been inserted into the organ. Lissa hadn't liked the look of Grievous's brain at all when the Geonosians had let her work on it the last time and she was determined to come up with a better regimen than just hacking away at any bits that had given up the ghost and become necrotic. A little preventative medication, for example, similar to what she was doing for his eyes…that couldn't hurt and she'd already put together a good cocktail of easily obtainable drugs, general antibiotics and anti-inflammatants, that should work well on a Kalee, especially when applied directly. She intended to speak to him about it as soon as she had him in her office and in his chair.

She paged back to the combined scan showing the full extent of the scarring in his memory and aggression centers. Her fingers drummed a nervous tattoo against the sides of her padd and she scowled. She still had a hard time accepting the sheer callousness of it all and had grown deeply suspicious about whether Grievous even understood what had been done to him. She just could not believe that anyone would voluntarily agree to having memories of their family suppressed in some lame, heartless attempt to better focus them on their work, and being left unable to sleep properly wasn't right either, it wasn't healthy. The Geonosians should have gone back in and fixed that if they cared about their creation. But that was the problem—they didn't care. She was starting to believe that Grievous had been deliberately designed with an inherent obsolescence, that he'd been put together just well enough to stay sane and last for the duration of the war.

Grievous had no objections to her wanting to alter his routine when she later opened up his skull plate. Really, he was turning out to be quite reasonable about such things, as long as he was thoroughly informed beforehand and presented with some logical explanations for any changes. From his somewhat distracted air, Lissa guessed he was also already thinking out how best to accomplish his latest task and perhaps almost welcomed the opportunity to sit quietly and do that while at the same time undergoing one of his annoying but necessary maintenance sessions. Whatever it was that was making him agreeable, it made her heave another huge private sigh of relief.

Lissa meant to use the fixed laser again instead of the handheld model and immobilized Grievous's head—an extraordinarily easy thing to do, in his case—before getting started. She didn't care if the Geonosians did laugh at her cautious manner. She intended to lose not one neuron more than she absolutely had do whenever working on the General's mind and for that she needed the precision that only the fixed instrument could afford. A quick glance showed that she'd probably have quite a bit of precision work to do. She could already see a distressing number of little pale and blackish spots on the surface of the tissues about many of the implants.

A mental image of the scan of the damage she couldn't see drifted up and demanded attention. Lissa stood behind the cyborg, looking down at his exposed brain, in a quandary, distressed by what she knew and by what she was considering. She'd learned almost nothing about Grievous's true background and nature, only that he'd once been a warlord general on his homeworld and had been involved in a mutilating accident. He might have always been a brutal man, already the vile monster and butcher described in the HoloNet broadcasts long before he'd been recruited. She didn't even particularly like him and still bore him a terrific grudge for having bullied her into her current situation, and supposed that she might even be doing the galaxy a huge favour if her laser just happened to 'slip' some day as she was working away on him, although that would undoubtedly lead to her own death as well. On the other hand, there were those nodules, his abnormal behaviours and rages, his abusive training which bordered on cruelty. It was possible that he was just as much a victim of his circumstances as she was herself.

Nagas had said that they were going to go back in and remove some of the blocks when the cyborg had initially seemed too violent. He'd specified the word 'remove'…

"General Grievous?" said Lissa slowly. "Would you…mind if I took a short series of scans while I worked? I'd like to have them for comparative reference for the next time I have a look at you."

She held her breath. Grievous sat there in a half-reclining pose, eyes closed, hands lying in his lap, holding his elegant alien mask. He looked remarkably peaceful for once, calm, trusting almost. "Go ahead," he replied.

Lissa adjusted the scanning machine. She brought up a picture of one of the little balls of scarring within Grievous's memory center. She activated the integrated targeting option and slaved it onto the microsurgical laser. The hell with it. Part of her job when examining the cyborg's brain was to clean up any dead and dying tissue and that was what she was going to do, clear out some dead stuff.

As quickly as she dared, feeling a little sick with anxiety the whole time, Lissa targeted, then used the laser to destroy three of the nodules, leaving behind tiny empty spaces surrounded by what she hoped were live, healthy cells. She had no idea of what would happen next. She'd been unable to find any neurological case studies involving Kaleesh that offered any insight into how well the species recovered from traumatic injuries to the brain or the removal of tumours and lesions. Maybe he'd regain all his memories, turn out to be a decent guy, reconsider what he was doing, and quit. Maybe nothing at all would happen. Lissa refused to speculate any further. Fate would have to take over for her.

Negating three blocks took all the extra time she dared risk taking without making Grievous suspicious and she then moved on to some genuine work, taking the occasional scan whenever she was done with a specific area. She released his head once finished with her examination and microsurgery, completed all her preventative treatments, closed him up, and that was that. Grievous paused to look at the last scan she'd taken and left up on screen, a external dorsal view of his own mind, but otherwise did as usual, simply found his own way out and left.

Lissa surreptitiously watched him go. The woman who'd never had the slightest use for politicking throughout her adult life and who'd once earned the General's scathing assessment of being a fool because of it, was now a saboteur.

TBC


	10. Manifest Disclosures

Hello again and apologies this time for the genuine lateness of this update. I actually had the chapter ready earlier, but alas, the server at my end was partially unavailable due to upgrades being loaded, and since I have no home computer and am dependent on the one at work, there wasn't much I could do about it. One positive aspect is that I was able to think out the next two chapters during the delay. The next one will be called 'A Little Armageddon' and will guest-star a character a couple of you have asked about, and after that it'll be 'A Dinner With Dooku', which will feature, er, the obvious. This story has turned into the sort that will plague me forever until I write it all out, so if I'm ever late updating in the future, don't worry—it's just lack of computer time or an extra-long chapter in the works or something like that…I really am determined to finish this sucker! Besides, I can't think of a better way to fill a long boring night shift than by making up stuff involving Grievous! 

Some of you asked about Lissa's age. At the start of this story she is forty-two. My version of Grievous also starts out at forty-two, in fact, I envision the two of them as having been born within a week of each other. I just find characters with some experience and history behind them more interesting. But enough chitchat. Enjoy!

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 10 – Manifest Disclosures

Grievous had come in early for his last routine bacta treatment for exactly the reason his personal physician had conjectured—he'd received a new assignment for which he wanted to be in tip-top form. His masters, Dooku and Sidious, had been well pleased with his vicious efficiency as of late and they thought it high time to put his unique talents to better use by targeting a planet closer to the Republic breast, the staunch Loyalist world of Oronaciem. It would be the General's first foray into the Mid Rim territories and the purpose of his mission would be purely to spread terror—Oronaciem was seen as having no particular value aside from serving as a focal point for Republic support in its area. The assault would also mark two important dates, the end of Grievous's trial period serving as the Supreme Commander of the Separatist droid armies and an acknowledgement of sorts of his first full year of service to the CIS since being resurrected as an experimental cyborg. The two Sith Lords could think of no better way to celebrate their dreadful servant's anniversary than by unleashing him onto the rich, unsuspecting, complacent Republic holdings of the galaxy's Mid Rim.

Grievous had personal reasons to welcome his new orders, too. As he planned his attack, his intelligence suggested that the Republic would send considerable forces against him. The Oronaciems were Monarchists. They'd long had a system of government which revolved about a prominent, well-loved Royal Family that publicly supported the planet's ties with the Galactic Republic, and Grievous was sure that the Royals' safety would be ruled paramount by the soft-headed fools who'd try to oppose him. And what better candidates for the job than his betes noires, the Jedi? Grievous plotted with the expectation that many Jedi would be sent, and in between his scheming, he spent long hours practising his combat techniques with his MagnaGuards, the better to kill them when he found them.

The fleet was pared down to the minimum number of the fastest ships Grievous had under his command and felt safe in taking along on his lightning strike, and his luck and his strategy held as they entered the Mid Rim. His task force was detected en route, early enough for Oronaciem to have some warning—Grievous had expected it—but not so early that they had time to prepare and fully organize their defences. While the main body of the Separatist fleet engaged the planetary forces, Grievous himself led a swift special mission to Oronaciem's capital spaceport and there found, to his immense glee, exactly what he'd hoped to find: the enemy caught flatfooted in the midst of still trying to evacuate its government. The one shuttle already in the air, the General's droid gunships instantly brought down. Anyone still waiting on the ground, they put the run to, by shooting up the remainder of the waiting shuttles and other ships and destroying the landing platforms and control tower. The terminal itself, Grievous ordered be left intact for the time being. He was hoping to find live Jedi to hunt.

The gunships continued sweeping back and forth over the ruined spaceport, suppressing the meagre opposition that sporadically erupted from the port's own defences, while the two Separatist personnel carriers taking part landed and disgorged, in quick order, Grievous, a dozen of his best MagnaGuards, numerous battle droid troops and their weaponry, and lastly, one scared personal physician and her own little band of battle droid bodyguards. The spirits of the latter were not helped any when a stray rocket from the spaceport defences promptly exploded nearby as they were deploying and everyone had to momentarily dive for cover in case they came under further attack.

When Grievous and his MagnaGuards stormed the damaged terminal, he quickly discovered that the Republic had for once acquiesced with his fondest wishes, unwittingly offering him its own version of a birthday gift in the form of at least half a dozen Jedi and a full surviving squad of white-armoured clone troopers, who were still trying to marshal and protect what remained of their Oronaciem charges. He caught a glimpse of figures in elaborate, colourful costumes, probably some Royals, accompanied by people in simpler robes, running off in the background within one of the holding lounges. The cyborg and his droids were also confronted by the bulk of the Royals' protectors, already hunkered down in the same lounge to cover the rest of their party's retreat. A standoff, or so they thought.

The clone troopers, well trained, opened fire as soon as they saw their pursuers, but even they were unprepared for what came next. Instead of taking cover to fight it out, Grievous hurtled out from behind his MagnaGuards in a stupendous leap, tucked up into a somersaulting position, that arced him high over the fire-field and sent him crashing down into the midst of the soldiers. The one he landed on was instantly driven onto the floor under his heavy metal body and dead a scant second later when the cyborg wrenched his head half off with one foot. He took out two more men with crushing blows from his fists, then snatched up one of the bodies by the ankles and swung it at arm's length, knocking down yet more of the astonished troopers. All firing stopped as the soldiers still standing tried to re-aim their weapons at the monstrous metal construct now whirling among them. They'd had no practice in dealing with Grievous like this, had never imagined that he'd utterly disregard their weapons fire and charge their entire squad and the Jedi by himself. Grievous took muster as he fought, battering the men away from him. Fifteen clone soldiers, no, sixteen, half of them on the ground already, only four Jedi left to stall him—yes! he could do this! He shouted at his elite to carry on, to bypass this fight and go after the real prize, the governing politicians and their protectors that had retreated further into the terminal. The MagnaGuards did as ordered, leaving him.

Blaster fire rocketed past his head and Grievous ducked down onto all fours, dropping the corpse he'd been using as a club. He jumped at the men who'd managed to regroup, bowling them over, and yanked out his own blaster and activated a single lightsaber even as he was spinning back to confront the group. The Jedi were running up, to try and get at him, to attack him, but there were just too many people clustered in the way. The turmoil and confusion caused by his attack was so great that he was actually able to get a shot off and hit one of the Jedi in the arm before the man could get his lightsaber into position to deflect it.

Yells and crunching thuds and the loud, truncated hums of a lightsaber in furious action. Grievous did not so much do battle as wade his way through the remainder of the clone troopers, killing them as fast as he could. Their armour was useless against a direct lightsaber strike and scant protection against a kick that slammed into them with the force of a ten-story drop. Those few who thought to back away, to try and target him, he shot, to knock their weapons aside until he could reach them, and he fired at the Jedi too, when they came too close, forcing them to halt and defend themselves. As soon as the last man fell dead, he sprang up onto a little heap of the slain soldiers, metal claws skittering loudly for purchase on the smoking armour, and flared upright, unlocking his arms, exchanging his blaster for three more lightsabers. He held the energy weapons out in a deadly display, each blade a different colour, glaring from one dumbfounded face to the next of his hated opponents.

The Jedi stared back, stunned by the ease and blazing speed with which he'd destroyed the clone squad. Yet they were willing to engage him, nonetheless—they were fools, but brave fools, he granted them that. He stepped back down off the bodies and sank at once into his four-armed fighting stance. The Jedi assumed their own positions, the two outermost sliding off to either side of him, manoeuvring together against him. Grievous welcomed their attempt. His confidence was soaring and his heart pounding with exhilaration in a way it hadn't for far, far too long.

He launched a fresh assault before they could surround him and cut the team in two. Another slinking dash, at the Jedi who'd been slowest to retreat, and already their plans were falling apart. The constant whirl of his multiple blades half-blinded and bewildered them. They'd no sooner isolate and begin concentrating on one weapon than find he'd juggled it, and it would slash back at them from a whole new angle. His aggression was terrifying. His unnaturally bright eyes blazed as he darted his sleek, grisly head about, and short, harsh, guttural snarls—unnerving sounds to hear uttered by an apparent droid—escaped him in his excitement as he fought. Grievous made no effort to defend himself. He took hits freely as he pressed his attack, trusting in his armour to protect him; and in his rush to hurry, hurry, hurry and murder them all so he could run on and catch their brethren and kill them too, Grievous unwittingly added a whole new dimension to his psychological weaponry, the despair wrought by landing a good blow and seeing it have no effect whatsoever. A lightsaber left on his duranium plating for long seconds would have cut through in time, but that was like trying to touch the wind. The cyborg was just too fast for them, his reach too long, and he drove the Jedi back before him with ferocious intensity.

Despair led to weariness and hesitation, and hesitation to error. Grievous caught one Jedi with his juggling trick, slicing through him while the man's eyes and attention were still on the shifted blade. He skewered another when they tried again to surround him and he leapt and flipped over their heads to safety and one of the Jedi was too slow in turning around. The two remaining men backed away even faster from him after that, in no shape anymore to face two lightsabers apiece, and he chased right after them until their will failed and there was no room left to run. He finally dropped them both in the middle of the lounge he'd turned into a charnel-house, just two more sad, crumpled additions to the tapestry of death he'd strewn across the floor.

Grievous raced on to find his MagnaGuards. He didn't have to go far. They'd caught up with the remaining Oronaciems in the foyer of the terminal and already slaughtered them all, battering and shocking the civilians to death with their wickedly efficient electrostaffs. But the Jedi in charge, four more, as it turned out, had made them pay dearly. Five of the specialist droids lay deactivated on the ground, several in pieces, and even a couple of those still standing were missing parts. Grievous had ordered them to leave the Jedi alive, if they could, but the Republic warriors had refused to cooperate there too. The MagnaGuards had had to kill two of them, and the pair left, a slight female humanoid and a strange alien of a sort Grievous had never seen before, hulking and furred, with a long wrinkled snout and big sloe eyes, were injured, the furred one badly.

Disappointed, Grievous looked them over. The furred alien didn't even register his presence and appeared close to death. The woman seemed in better shape. She glowered back defiantly and stood firm despite her bloody wounds.

"Face me, Jedi, and I'll grant you a warrior's death," Grievous offered.

"Go to hell," she snarled, and spat at him.

Fine. Grievous unholstered his blaster and shot them both, not without a certain puzzled regret. He couldn't understand why anyone would choose execution over the opportunity to go down fighting.

Some of his battle droid troops began arriving in the foyer, efficiently continuing their task of securing the terminal. Grievous broke communications silence to check in with his commanders aboard the Invisible Hand and received back the coded message signifying that all was proceeding on schedule and that the battle was going their way. Reassured, he turned back to the carnage wrought by his MagnaGuards, and inspected the bodies with interest. One of the Jedi they'd killed was human and very young. Grievous suspected he'd been a padawan—maybe he hadn't missed out on all that much after all. He left the padawan's lightsaber lying where it had fallen, and that of the other dead Jedi sprawled next to him, too. The cyborg normally only collected trophies from those he'd had a personal hand in slaying.

The civilians were an intriguing mix. Elderly men and women in sober, rather formal attire—the regular politicians, he guessed—and several more that were much more flamboyantly clothed, undoubtedly members of the Royal Family. Grievous was surprised to find two Royal children, a boy and a girl, amoung the corpses. In his experience, most humans and near-human species tried to rescue their young first. It made him wonder who exactly had been aboard the shuttle his gunships had shot down and why they'd been given priority. Beyond that, he felt nothing as he gazed down upon the small bodies. All of his compassion, his capacity to empathize and feel pity, had either been locked away in his damaged mind or ruined.

Grievous took stock of his MagnaGuards. He reassigned the functional ones to assist the nearby battle droids and told the damaged ones that were still in shape enough to process orders to remain in place until tended to. He began retracing his route through the spaceport terminal, and while walking along, discovered for the first time that he couldn't reintegrate his right arm. He could initiate the sequence without any trouble and both halved limbs looked and worked fine on their own, they just would not fit together again. Much annoyed, he used one of his built-in droid commlinks to silently call for his physician to meet with him on ahead.

Sunny and his soldiers and his charge dutifully rendezvoused with the General as he was moving about the scene of his first fight, retrieving the spoils of his battle with the Jedi in the lounge. Lissa stiffened a little as soon as she saw all the bodies lying sprawled about, the cyborg picking through them like a mechanical spectre, and her unease deepened when she observed that every one of the corpses, clone troopers and Jedi warriors alike, were either laced with linear burn wounds or had simply been smashed, there was no other way to put it. A pungent haze, reeking of overcooked meat and burnt plastics and electronics, drifted about, adding to the sickening effect.

Grievous came over to her, stepping carefully and lifting his feet high. He was still in four-armed mode, a fascinating sight. For a few seconds, Lissa almost forgot about the slaughter.

"My right arm won't reintegrate," he said.

"Oh?"

She couldn't perceive any immediate reason why it wouldn't and asked him to try again. She saw it then—something was interfering with the action below his elbow joint. Lissa pulled his forearms out straight and sighted along their join lines, and quickly determined that there was a slight deformity in the upper limb's durasteel. When she felt it, it became even more evident, a very slight depression two fingers wide and with a faint pushed-up ridge up along one edge, just a few millimetres thick, yet enough to mechanically interfere with the integration sequence.

Lissa swallowed. There was only one thing which could've left such a mark on the incredibly strong alloy.

"There's some slight damage just below your elbow, sir, on one of the joining surfaces."

"Can you fix it?"

"Not here. It's structural. Shop work. It'd be best to have it replaced."

Grievous snorted to express his displeasure and his mild disgust with himself for having let one of the Jedi hit him in a vulnerable spot after all. "Find out how long that would take," he ordered.

But she didn't, she just stood there, looking him over. Now that she'd seen the damage inflicted by one lightsaber strike, she could discern more, mostly just lines of surface scorching on his duranium armour, concentrated on his forearm plating. He must've fought like a mad thing to get so banged up, taking on everyone at once, roaring through the room with fantastic speed and energy. He even smelled of death, of ashes and burnt flesh, and she'd just been touching the arms he'd used to massacre the people heaped all around her…

Her hesitation, coming on top of her unwelcome diagnosis, ignited Grievous's already smouldering temper and he blew up. "What is wrong now!" he cried.

Lissa suppressed a terrible start. "E—Excuse me?" she stuttered.

"You! What's the matter with you!"

His angry impatience with her only made her all the more nervous. "It's just—all these people," she tried to explain.

"Yes? And?"

"And—and some of them are Jedi—Jedi!—and you—you killed them all yourself."

"Of course I killed them! Of course they're Jedi! It's what I do!"

"Well, do you have to be so damn efficient at it?" she blurted, and in the next instant clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified at what she'd just uttered. Grievous stared at her, eyes literally bulging from their sockets. She could see the whites ringing his yellow irises between the dark lids, making him look crazed and startled. Then, he coughed.

He coughed again, a short rumbling grunt, low and hollow. It expanded into a whole string of similar sounds and Lissa realised with sudden astonishment that he wasn't coughing at all, he was laughing. Without meaning to, she had very much pleased and amused him.

"My arm," he prompted, with his chuckling done and anger defused, getting back to business. Lissa's cheeks began burning. She supposed that if he understood what her blushing meant, he'd find that bloody hilarious also.

She was able to contact the Geonosians via Sunny and assure Grievous that they could replace his damaged forearm anytime in about fifteen minutes. The General said he'd be up later and told the woman that there were some MagnaGuards that needed looking at a little further along. She trudged off after her bodyguard droids to find the damaged ones, still feeling embarrassed over her lapse. Some battlefield medic slash mechanic she was turning out to be!

The slaughter in the foyer struck her even harder than that wrought by Grievous alone, once she saw that the bodies were those of civilians and that two of them were children, and she turned to the damaged MagnaGuards almost with relief, grateful to have more work to immerse herself in. There was going to be plenty of work, too, and a couple of the deactivated ones looked so scrapped that she thought they'd be lucky to salvage them for parts. She and Sunny arranged for a pick-up, and when transport arrived, rode up with the droids to the Invisible Hand. Grievous had already returned to his flagship, although not to the Geonosians' shop, a short while earlier and there was no reason for Lissa to remain planetside any longer.

General Grievous monitored the remainder of the attack on Oronaciem from the bridge of the Invisible Hand. The opposition launched against him by the world's Republic-augmented forces was brisk, but not as strong as he'd expected, and he had no trouble completing his mission of sowing ruination and despair, and destroying the infrastructure of the planet. As soon as the last shred of resistance had been quashed, he promptly recalled his troops, reorganized the fleet for an orderly retreat, and left, his job done. The real payback, appalling footage of the destruction his utterly unprovoked assault had wreaked, would come the next day, when it was broadcast over the Republic news net.

Grievous kept watch until his fleet was in hyperspace and well beyond any possible retaliation, and then finally went below to the Geonosians' battle duty station for his needed repairs. All of the aliens, including his personal physician, were already busy getting the least damaged MagnaGuards operational again, but dropped that task instantly to see to the higher priority of fixing the General's damaged limb. As promised, it didn't take long before he was sitting with a new forearm in place and his brain wired up through an access port in the side of his skull, waiting for the Geonosians to finish initializing the new part and running their checks. He was surprised to see Lissa's two service droids taking part in the procedure, the insectoid aliens making use of them as they would their own drones. He'd thought that the woman had stopped bringing them along on her duty stints, but it seemed that she'd been leaving them in the Geonosians' shop instead. Grievous eyed the droids irritably, even though they weren't bothering him in the slightest. He supposed he just bore them a grudge because the flying one had unexpectedly sassed him that last time he'd seen them.

Lissa got a call on her personal commlink while Grievous's forearm was still being initialized. He could overhear her making a few weak objections to someone on the other end, then telling the Geo team leader that she had to run up to her office for a while to oversee some new equipment installation she'd asked for. Grievous moodily watched the human woman leave. Even though he knew the Geonosians were highly capable technicians, more so than Lissa on this occasion since they had the specialized experience which she lacked, he found himself resenting their cool efficiency in a way he hadn't before and wishing that she'd stayed on to help handle his repairs. He just didn't like the Geonosians' approach anymore, their unsympathetic attitude towards him, now that he'd had a taste of being treated in a warmer and more personalized fashion.

Grievous passed the time by idly watching the two service droids. He couldn't recall ever seeing designs anything quite like them. They both looked needlessly cutesy, with their mobile antennae and prominent, obviously faux eyes, and out of place working at the serious business of getting him functioning at a hundred percent again. The long, six-legged one was carrying an instrument-laden tray on its flat back as though it were a sort of mobile cart that had the added benefit of being able to hand out its contents. The flying one was currently engaged in holding a small comm padd and calling out steps, in Geonosian, from what Grievous recognized as some sort of diagnostic checklist. He was faintly amused by the fact that the small droid seemed to be taking pains to hover just out of his reach and still had the gall to aim the odd, disapproving glance his way. If the thing belonged to him, Grievous thought, he would have had it memory-wiped at the first hint of glitchy impudence, presuming he'd ever own such a machine at all. Bad enough he had to endure casual slurs from other people, let alone tolerate it from a droid!

The small droid seemed almost to sense his thoughts and drifted even further out of reach than before. It seemed to mutter to itself and Grievous could have sworn he saw the artificial corners of its small mouth turn down in a frown, crinkling the faux suede 'skin' covering its face and body. It reached a hand back to scratch at the part of its body which projected behind and probably housed its anti-grav unit and—

Grievous blinked. Wait a moment—it scratched itself? Since when had anyone ever programmed a droid to scratch at itself?

As he continued watching, the little droid did it again, digging at its butt with every appearance of satisfactorily relieving an itch. Grievous stared hard at the Geonosians, but they either didn't notice what the droid was doing or saw it and didn't care. The cyborg turned his attention to the long droid with the tray on its back. The Geo in charge had just handed it one tool and simply waited, hand outstretched, until the droid chose another and placed it in the tough insectoid palm. No words passed between them and the Geonosian didn't even look at the droid, just waited for the machine to intuit his needs and choose the right instrument—he let the droid make an informed decision based on observation and choose!

A gust of hot, almost indecipherable emotion swept through Grievous. Shock, anger, a sense of having been duped—it all surged forth in turn and his hands clenched so hard on the armrests of his chair that the metal began to dent. Sadly, the Geonosians still didn't consider any of this as being out of the ordinary. They'd all gotten used to the cyborg's mercurial moods and anger, and had stopped trying to fathom reasons for his swift rages long ago—it was just the way he was, they thought, or rather, had been made to be. Grievous seethed on, alone. The second his repair was complete, he meant to get to the bottom of this, oh yes…

Many levels above, Lissa finished overseeing the installation of a second computer station suspended from ceiling tracking above the infirmary chair in her office, new equipment which she'd requested, in part, due to the General's very intolerance of her droids, and a bit of an extravagance, but she was damned if she was going to ever risk having Gregory booted into oblivion again just because a certain cranky cyborg couldn't take a joke or find humour in a harmless little droid's sauciness. The timing of the work crew couldn't have been worse, for she'd really wanted to help finish up with Grievous, yet there'd been no arguing with them, and she'd learned long ago never to query the sometimes bizarre illogic of military scheduling. As soon as the crew, a grumpy Neimoidian tech and his two maintenance droids, had done their thing and left, Lissa indulged her second personal reason for having wanted the new equipment. She slipped onto the vast, oversized chair, adjusted it to her satisfaction, pulled down the new screen and unhooked the remote keypad, reclined back and…ahh!…perfect! Certainly a lot better than sitting hunched over at her usual workstation for hours on end. Lissa had recently found an awful lot of intriguing new information now available to her, thanks to her high-level medical clearance, and she saw no reason why she shouldn't be as comfortable as possible while she perused it all during her spare time. She felt that the Separatists owed her that much, at the very least.

It occurred to Lissa that the only thing that would make her moment of self-indulgence complete would be the addition of the soft blanket and one of the pillows lying on her bed. She actually got up to fetch the items, to try out the complete indulgence package, as it were, and it was lucky for her that she did so, for she'd no sooner gotten to her feet than Grievous burst in, and he was in a rotten mood, to put it politely. He also had her two droids with him, holding Gregory by the scruff of his neck in one hand, Trigger heeling miserably by his side as ordered. As soon as Grievous saw the woman standing there, facing him, he allowed Trigger to scuttle on past him and threw Gregory directly at her, none too gently. Lissa anxiously examined the two of them as soon as they'd rushed up to her, but they only seemed to be agitated, not hurt.

"He violated us!" Gregory accused, clinging to his mistress, brave again now that he was safe in her arms. Even poor Trigger crowded against her and was in need of a hug; a rarity.

"General? What in the world—?" Lissa sputtered, while trying to pry Gregory, who was squeezing way too hard, off her neck.

"Yes. That is what I am wondering!"

His reply made no sense to her whatsoever. She finished peeling Gregory off her body, looked the two of them over once more, and then turned to the livid cyborg. "What were you doing with my droids?" she asked, still baffled.

"Why, just returning them." He bowed to her a little, lowering his head, in full sarcasm mode. Just as she'd earlier unintentionally pleased him, so it seemed that something she'd done had now had the exact opposite effect. He was clearly very angry with her, yet she didn't know why! "After all, Miss Veleroko," he continued on in a sneering tone, "I wouldn't want to deprive you of your companions. Your little, half-human, half-droid companions."

The penny dropped. Partly. Lissa opened her mouth to speak, closed it, frowned, then tried again. "How did you—"

"I guess I can read a damn DNA analysis too!" Grievous shot back.

Lissa became more somber. She regarded him gravely for a moment, then turned to her service droids again. "Why don't you two go back down and help the Geonosians?" she said to them.

"But they just told us to stay up here!" Gregory whined, not wanting to miss a potentially juicy argument.

"I don't care what they said. Go back down and help them out or just wait for me in their shop until I come and get you. Now scoot!"

Gregory lapsed into self-pitying whimpers as he flitted over to the door, taking care to fly a wide bow around Grievous, but Trigger, also reluctant to obey, although for far more altruistic reasons, held his place. He hesitated, looking from Grievous to his mistress and back again. "Ma'am?"

"It's all right, Trigger," the woman reassured him. "General Grievous just wants to talk." She fired her own look at the General, stopping just short of glaring at him. "Go on now. I'll be down soon."

The long bronzy service droid submitted and went out in turn and then it was just the living individuals left in the room, the cyborg and his personal physician. "Well?" Grievous demanded.

"Well, what? Forgive me, General, but I don't quite understand why you're so upset—"

"I'm not upset! Those things are biodroids!"

"Yes?"

"You don't deny it?"

"Of course not. I thought you knew."

"I—"

For the first time in ages, Grievous found himself at a loss for words. The human woman continued to regard him, attentive and sober. "Even if you didn't know, I would have happily told you they were," she added in a quiet voice, "if you'd asked."

Implicit in her reply was the way she'd really wanted to phrase it—"if you'd bothered asking"—which Grievous, always hyper-sensitive to slights, readily discerned. It made him all the madder. "Biodroids with human brains," he finally said, his voice contemptuous. "One of your Republic edicts, I presume, to allow that."

"Brain tissue, not entire brains," Lissa corrected, "which was donated and obtained in a perfectly legal fashion." Now she was getting a little mad too. Of all people to hassle her about ethics! "Really now, General, what kind of a person do you think I am?" she exclaimed indignantly.

"A Separatist."

"That—That's not fair. You gave me no choice in that matter."

"Didn't I?"

She stared back helplessly, then averted her eyes. The sad thing was that he meant it, saw nothing wrong in sacrificing an entire species to pursue one's own self-interests. It was pointless to object any further, not to mention dangerous—he was clearly fuming over something again. Lissa sleeked her own ruffled feelings and attempted a less antagonistic approach.

"General Grievous…why don't you just ask me what it is you want to know?" she tried.

The tall figure seemed to shift fractionally, the long face tuck in at the bottom. "The droids. Tell me about them," he said, his gruff, accented voice harshening it into a command.

"They're both experimental prototypes. I built Trigger first. His model's meant to be a service droid for handicapped children. Gregory's more sophisticated. He incorporates more bio-matter and was supposed to be a child's companion and teaching droid, but he…he didn't turn out quite as I expected. He's a little too cranky for kids."

"Bio-matter?" Grievous echoed suspiciously. "It has a personality. That of the brain's owner."

"No-o, not quite. It'd be more accurate to say that his droid programming incorporates some of the donor's inherent personality traits, the ones that survived the dying process and were hard-wired into those portions of his or her brain which I did use."

"His or her? You didn't know the donor?"

"People don't exactly line up to donate their organs at the best of times, General, let alone die under circumstances favourable for harvest. All I ever knew was that any tissue I worked with came from adults that hadn't suffered from any known psychological or neurological disorders." She paused, couldn't quite suppress a smile. "I only found out after the fact that Gregory's donor must've been a cantankerous, lazy, know-it-all in life. I've never tried using quite so much bio-matter again. Trigger's got about the right percentage to have the qualities I look for in a biodroid. He's much more intuitive than a regular droid, more interactive, and can learn, and he has a pleasant disposition…well, I think he does."

Grievous mulled over her words. "Did you make other biodroids?"

"A fair number. Never as many as I would have liked to, given that they're a special interest of mine. Unfortunately, getting the bio-matter I needed was always difficult, and there isn't—wasn't—much demand for them in the Republic market. A lot of people don't really understand what a biodroid is. They mix them up with cyborgs."

Yes, I can attest to that, thought Grievous sourly. "You—worked with cyborgs?" he asked.

"Of course. I've dealt with quite a few people over the years whom you could class as cyborgs. About half of them human, the rest aliens of various species. My main job was working up their droid components, nothing as sophisticated as your own, they were just designed for everyday getting about." She paused again, to eye him. "No one was ever as extensively enhanced as you, though, General. I did have one client, she'd retained only about thirty, thirty-one percent of her organic body, but that was an unusual case."

Grievous eyed her back. His ill temper was starting to unravel under the weight of her ready responses, yet he couldn't shake the feeling that something was being left unsaid. Lissa waited patiently for his next question, the picture of proper subordinate compliance. It was really quite frustrating how she could look so guileless and provoke the sense that something devious was going on, both at the same time.

"You've had considerable experience, then," he remarked at last, stalling in lieu of another query.

"The Geonosians wouldn't let me anywhere near you if I hadn't," she replied, quite reasonably. A lot of what she said was reasonable. That was annoying, too. He hadn't forgotten how she'd reasonably talked him right into forgetting all about her secure files once.

Grievous was running out of things with which to confront her. In retrospect, he wasn't even sure anymore why his discovery had angered him so. The Geonosians, it had turned out, had always known that the woman's machines were biodroids—it'd helped convince them that she knew her stuff and was safe to entrust with their most valuable creation. The ones on battle duty hadn't known exactly which species had contributed the 'bio-matter', as Lissa so quaintly put it (nor had they much cared), but a quick analysis run at the General's behest had easily solved that mystery. Huh…humans! He served two of them and was now himself served by a third, and every one of them seemed to have the knack of being able to fluster him with but a single glance or a well-chosen phrase—even their blasted human-brained biodroids could bother him. It had to be a species trait.

"Your droids, do they know what they are?" Grievous demanded, trying one last time to rattle the woman.

"Naturally. It'd be impossible to hide it from them since I do have to maintain their organics from time to time. They think it makes them special. And they are."

The immediate, smooth reply stymied him. So much for any residual hesitation. And why, exactly, was he interrogating her like this at all? It wasn't as though he were looking for reasons to get rid of Lissa. She was the first person he'd met since his accident who understood and could look after his special needs and who treated him with the deference and respect he wanted while doing so. Even better, from his perspective, he could do with her as he pleased and order her around with absolute impunity. He couldn't do that with Nagas or his subordinates, all of whom had the powerful backing of their Archduke, Poggle the Lesser, and through him, Count Dooku himself.

Grievous shifted his weight again and drew his brows down and tilted his face, managing to convey a very creditable scowl despite his lack of organic features. Lissa watched him carefully, hiding her own considerable trepidation. The big cyborg had evidently become all of a sudden suspicious of her, although she didn't think it was for the reason she feared, yet he was also starting to appear a wee bit confused. A manifestation of his returning memories? She couldn't tell, not without quizzing him. She was suddenly struck by how fundamentally dumb her sabotage target of choice now seemed.

In the end, Grievous did his own version of hemming and hawing by retreating into military procedure and making a cursory inspection of her new equipment and taking a spin around her office before proclaiming that all was "very well" and to "carry on", and then stomped out, still miffed. Lissa, relieved enough to have escaped his wrath to be feeling saucy, bit her tongue to keep from yelling after him to please feel free to come back anytime.

TBC


	11. A Little Armageddon

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 11 – A Little Armageddon

The strike in the Mid Rim territories had depleted Grievous's fighting forces and it was time to take his fleet in for supplies and repairs. He set sail for the sector's CIS military headquarters as soon as he'd gathered up the vessels he'd left behind in the Outer Rim, and a further two quick hyperspace jumps later, was already docking the entire Separatist droid army in temporary safe harbour while the Republicans were still reeling over what had happened to Oronaciem.

The headquarters, and an immense supply depot, were based on the single desolate moon orbiting a Trade Federation-managed world named Nees'n'ublay, but which everyone now simply called Nee'port. Just as its new name suggested, Nee'port did indeed have a spacious port—it had three, actually, each one of them serving separate distinct functions. Nee'port proper was the planet-based spaceport that catered to all Separatist personnel and friendly neutrals alike. It was a free port and Grievous's people, the Kaleesh, would have been welcomed there if they'd been in the habit of conducting business off-world. Then there were the massive orbital shipyards and civilian docks for vessels that couldn't make planet-fall, sited directly above Nee'port's spaceport, and thirdly, the purely military dockyards hugging the moon. Grievous berthed his ships in the military yard. His wasn't the only fleet in port, but it was by far the largest and most formidable.

Grievous left it up to the various ships' captains, mostly droid, a few living, to get the actual resupplying and maintenance started, and shuttled down to the moon base. He had several important meetings scheduled, one with Count Dooku within the hour, and he also wanted to see whether his latest raid had generated any far-ranging repercussions yet. He hurried along to the base's operational center, to quickly brief himself before he met with his superior.

It was already late in the evening, by the moon base's time schedule, and there were few people left still roaming about in the corridors, yet as luck would have it, Grievous ran into one of them nonetheless. It further happened to be one of his least favourite people in the entire galaxy. One of Dooku's special minions. The Dark Jedi, Asajj Ventress.

They both jammed to a halt upon catching sight of each other and regarded one another with nearly identical attitudes of mingled surprise and disgust, the cyborg having no difficulty at all in expressing his immediate loathing with his eyes and body posture alone. Asajj, a female Rattataki, scowled right back. She was a slender woman, humanoid, clad in a form-fitting upper garment and full skirt, and clearly very fit and athletic. Her pale blue-grey face with its fine features and opaline eyes was as striking in its way as Grievous's own and would have been quite beautiful if her visage hadn't been so curdled by long years of harsh deprivation and hatred.

One of her hands had already slid down to lightly grip one of her lightsabers, just in case. Grievous viewed her action with scorn. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I might ask you the same thing," she shot back.

"I'm here with the fleet. My fleet. And to see Dooku."

"Good for you."

Her tone was sneering, controlled, but Grievous could hear the festering jealousy underlying it even so. Asajj had once sought command of the droid armies being gathered together by the Separatists, had expected it almost, and had been shocked and outraged when Dooku had appointed Grievous instead. It was not surprising, therefore, that when the two of them, Supreme Commander and spurned aspirant, eventually met, that they'd instantly clashed on every level imaginable. Accusations had soon followed, insults had been hurled, and then they'd flown at each other without further preamble, too frenzied in their respective rages to even make it a proper duel. By the time Count Dooku, alerted by the veritable psychic explosion of their emotions, arrived, he'd found them brawling on the floor like a couple of rabid curs, with the cyborg about to dash the woman's brains out for good. Grievous had earned a violent tongue-lashing for his actions and Asajj a week's stay in sickbay, and Count Dooku had been so furious with the both of them that he wouldn't look directly at either of them for days. To top it off, just before Dooku interrupted them, Grievous had apparently snatched away and secreted a lightsaber which Asajj had just laboriously finished building, the first and last one she'd ever make herself, and he refused to return it after the fight. Asajj had been so upset by this that she'd eventually swallowed her pride and came crying to Dooku about it, which angered the Count all over again to the point where he'd simply snapped at her that he wasn't about to get involved in the petty quarrelling of his students and that she should go challenge Grievous directly if she wanted the weapon back so badly. This, she never did, although whether it was because she was too apprehensive or because the opportunity never presented itself, was something only Asajj ever knew for sure. In time, Dooku relented and gave her a pair of new lightsabers, but it still didn't make up for what Asajj saw as Grievous's outright theft.

She stared at him now, emboldened by the knowledge that Dooku had protected her before, standing firm and refusing to get out of his way. Grievous, with his master's past anger also on his mind, relented first.

"I have work to do," he said coldly. "Stand aside."

"You've got room. Move yourself."

A little ripple, a sort of mechanical shudder, went through the cyborg. He moved, taking a single large step sideways before starting forward. Asajj strode forward too. They both walked stiff-legged and bristling, with exaggerated, almost comic gravity.

Grievous couldn't stop himself from cranking up his hearing as they began edging past one another. And then—he couldn't believe it—he distinctly heard the muttered phrase "bloody droid". It was all the excuse he needed. His pit instincts kicked in and launched him into an instantaneous sideways leap, arms uncoupling as he lunged at the woman. Asajj was caught by complete surprise. She'd made the mistake of believing he'd never dare defy Dooku's wishes, and even her Force sensitivity didn't warn her, for there was so little left of the cyborg's former organic self that he wasn't even detectable as a living being under normal circumstances. He slammed her up against the wall, upper hands grabbing her wrists, lower hands pushing back her torso, grasped her ankles together with one taloned foot, and pinned her as neatly as mounting a butterfly specimen on a piece of cork.

Asajj's lean wiry body convulsed at once, yet it was already hopeless. The horrid clawed appendages clamped upon her limbs shifted not iota. His grip remained as sure and implacable as time itself no matter how much she exerted herself, almost as though the revolting creature had been practising for just such a moment, something she wouldn't put past him. From all she'd heard and seen of him to date, Asajj thought him exactly the sort of sadistic beast who would get off on tormenting women.

Grievous, who was not at all discriminatory and who hated anyone he perceived as a rival with equal intensity, leaned in and tilted his head down until the front of his faceplate was almost touching the woman's ear.

"You want to watch that tongue of yours," he purred roughly. "Better yet, perhaps I should tear it out and watch it for you. You just don't learn, do you?"

"Dooku will have your head," she hissed, still defiant.

"Will he? I doubt it. Your star is fading, you witch. I hear a padawan kicked your ass and stole your ship."

Asajj struggled furiously again, her face going almost puce with rage. Grievous let her, maliciously enjoying her futile efforts. He still couldn't believe his luck in having gotten the drop on her. Occasionally, he felt an immense, invisible pressure shoving at him as she tried to Force-push him away, but she couldn't seem to channel her power properly from her awkward position or perhaps he was just too close, and he had, in any case, taken the precaution of magnetically locking his free foot in place to anchor himself. He breathed hard right in her ear for no reason other than because he knew it would repulse her and let one of the hands he'd pressed beneath her throat drop down to her waist. He contemptuously fingered the hilt of one of the dual lightsabers hanging there.

"Don't you dare!" she choked out in a high, screechy voice.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't have them," he jeered back. "Dooku gave these to you, didn't he? What's the matter? Couldn't make another one yourself? You're not even a real Jedi anymore. You're not Sith either. You're nothing."

"I'm more anything than you'll ever be alive! You're just a machine and a few scraps of medical waste!"

"You scrawny old harridan! I ought to—"

The loud unmistakable sound of a throat being cleared froze them both. Count Dooku was standing there in the corridor, his face thunderous.

Grievous let the woman go with slow reluctance. "We were just exchanging pleasantries," he said.

"Really!" Dooku exclaimed. "It looked to me as though you were exchanging intimacies."

The very idea got the two of them apart like nothing else. Grievous back-pedalled, feeling nauseous. He didn't even have a stomach anymore and he still felt sick. Asajj looked as though she'd woken up to find a live spider in her mouth. Dooku regarded his two subordinants with an exasperation rare for him. At least he'd caught them this time before any damage had been done.

"Miss Ventress, you have business to attend to down in the weapons lab, am I correct?"

"Er, yes, Count."

"Then I suggest you see to it at once," he replied sharply. "As for you…" He gaze slid over his Supreme Commander, who was still glaring at Asajj and standing crouched over in a feral, animalistic way which Dooku thought vulgar and quite distasteful. "You come with me!"

The Count strode off, not bothering to check whether Grievous was following—he knew he would. Asajj watched them go, scowling and rubbing at her sore wrists. "I'm not old," she muttered to herself.

Grievous was very tense at first as he strode along behind Count Dooku, bracing himself for the caustic condemnation he was sure would come his way at any time. As the minutes went by without any such thing happening, he began to relax. Dooku must have heard how the Ventress woman had insulted him and decided he'd been fairly provoked, Grievous thought. It was the only reason he could think of to explain his superior's willingness to overlook his lapse. The cyborg would have been helplessly outraged had he ever suspected the real reason for Dooku's generosity, if he'd known that the human had rationalized to himself that if one chose to work with brutes, then one simply had to expect and tolerate a certain amount of brutish behaviour, there was nothing else for it.

Dooku finally glanced back at Grievous and said, "Admiral Talzikan's fleet is also in. Did you see?"

"Yes. It appears that he has lost several destroyers."

The Count nodded. "Three," he confirmed, pleased by the cyborg's keen observation. Brute though he might be, when it came to warfare, Grievous was proving himself meticulous and a true asset—it was a shame that all his enhancements hadn't worked equally well. "The Admiral is strategizing in one of the planning rooms," Dooku went on. "We still have some time. Would you care to meet him?"

Grievous answered in the affirmative. He was well aware that the Separatist war effort encompassed many more forces than just those under his personal command and that his human master worked closely with any number of people on a variety of projects, including other special apprentices and students with whom he shared his Sith knowledge. He'd always been a little inquisitive about the military end of Dooku's interests, wondered sometimes about what other armies and battles the Count monitored and might have had a hand in directing, and was not about to pass up an opportunity to allay his professional curiosity. Dooku nodded again, as if well satisfied by Grievous's response.

The Count led them on through another screening and into the most highly guarded sector of the base and entered one of the secure operational rooms used for planning. It was quite dim inside, the lights turned down so the occupants could better see the screens and holographic projections above the central plotting table, but not so dark that the people within didn't instantly see and recognize the two visitors who'd just entered. For Dooku, they all straightened a little, respectfully. For Grievous, their attentive postures froze solid with astonishment and fear. None of them had ever actually met the cyborg before, and in the shadowed periphery of the planning room, lit only by the feeble glows of the operational instruments, the extraordinary figure with its spectral face and glimmering eyes looked positively ghoulish.

"Admiral Talzikan, may I present my Supreme Commander and colleague, General Grievous," said Dooku.

"Um. A pleasure," the Admiral, a short, sturdy man of human stock, replied automatically. He considered whether to shake the General's hand, looked at it, shuddered inwardly at the thought of those bone-white artificial digits even touching his own, and dropped that notion in a hurry. He wound up just standing there, with no idea of what to say or do next, fighting the urge to squirm.

Dooku concealed a faint smirk and decided to rescue the poor man. "We're both interested in your latest campaign, Admiral," he said. "You'll soon be engaging the Betschek system, yes?"

"The Betschek homeworld, yes, your grace," Talzikan said, relieved to find himself directed back onto a subject he knew how to handle. His gaze flicked over towards the silent cyborg out of politeness, to acknowledge him, and hurriedly returned to the Count's far more cordial visage.

"Have you finalized your battle plans yet, Admiral?" Dooku inquired.

"Almost. I can give you a synopsis of what we've in mind so far."

"Please do."

Talzikan swung into briefing mode, quickly establishing his target's situation and the possible resistance he expected to encounter, and running through the tactics he planned to use to overcome it. The Count looked on attentively, making an occasional small query to help clarify what Talzikan was telling him. The General just kept standing there, still saying nothing—if it weren't for his shifting eyes, it would have been hard to tell if he were even alive. It wasn't until the Admiral was finished and Count Dooku turned to address Grievous that the machine-like creature finally seemed to stir to some semblance of life again.

"General Grievous? Have you any comments on Admiral Talzikan's strategy?"

"It will succeed—" he grated out.

"Ah."

"—at the cost of half his troops."

One of Dooku's elegant eyebrows arched up. He looked at Talzikan. "Admiral?"

Talzikan was already frowning, the expression on his broad, honest face showing some heat for the first time. "I'm estimating losses of no more than twenty-five percent," he said.

"The Betschekians are fierce fighters. They are warriors by heritage," Grievous pointed out. "They will not yield and they will not surrender."

"Admiral? Were you aware of that?" Dooku asked quietly.

"We…know they're good fighters. I'm not expecting it to be easy."

"Still. Half your men… That exceeds the usual level of acceptable losses, does it not?"

Talzikan dug his toes in, growing stubborn. "I disagree with that estimate," he insisted.

"I see…"

Dooku was enjoying himself. He regarded Talzikan thoughtfully for another long moment, then turned back to Grievous.

"General? Is there any way to lessen those casualties? A change of tactics, perhaps, if you were devising this strategy?"

"Of course."

A single stride of his long, angulated legs brought the big cyborg up to the side of the plotting table. He grabbed up a light pointer and began using it to indicate various parts of the holographic projections with quick, sharp jabs as he spoke on.

"The forces you are holding in reserve for the major ground assault on the capital, I would position them—here—instead. I would begin the attack as planned, then use the reserves five minutes later to launch a second assault on this sector, where they'll be trying to safeguard the civilian residents. Betschekian females do not fight, only the males. Attack here and the men opposing you will be thrown into turmoil. They will want to fall back to defend their mates and young. Their officers will have great difficulty controlling them."

Talziban stared at Grievous, aghast. Not all of the forces working for the Separatists were wicked men. Many were simply pawns, obeying well-intentioned governments who'd been seduced by Dooku and others of his ilk, and Admiral Talziban and his staff were prime examples. The counsel dealt out by the Count's alloy colleague served only to horrify them.

"General, I—I don't think I can ask my men to attack unarmed women and children," Talziban stuttered.

The look he got back was one the Admiral would never forget for the remainder of his life—a glare of such malevolence, such merciless, cold contempt, that Talziban felt himself to be looking into the eyes of a fiend and actually flinched back. The words that followed were just as cruel.

"Then be prepared to lose half of them."

Dooku again arched one eyebrow.

"Advice worth considering," he remarked, then gestured at Grievous and turned to leave. The people left behind continued staring after the unlikely pair, helplessly, until they'd gone.

As soon as they were out in the corridor, Grievous huffed and said, "He won't do it. I know he won't."

"No," Dooku agreed. "Not everyone shares your determination to carry out your duty in the most expedient way possible, I fear. And he hasn't your training. He doesn't understand the power one is granted when one follows the teachings of the Sith."

They walked on, into the innermost sanctum of the base headquarters, one even more tightly guarded and secured. At last they came to the small spare chamber that Dooku sometimes used as an office when paying one of his frequent visits to Nee'port. It was a curiously unadorned room with a strange circular device set right in its center. Both men approached it solemnly and Dooku activated a control built into its base. After a moment, a holographic figure, shrouded, began to form.

The two of them, human and Kaleesh cyborg, sank at once onto their bent knees in postures of obeisance. The figure represented the only being in the entire galaxy that either would humble themselves before, even Grievous, who called Dooku his master although he refused to kneel to him. But he'd kneel for his other master, Lord Sidious, the figure coalescing above the device. Grievous, and the Count, both knew where the true power resided.

They waited until Sidious greeted them and bade them to rise. Grievous gazed with respect at the cowled face which he'd never seen in its entirety. He knew only that Sidious was human, like Dooku.

Lord Sidious began to brief them. It was nothing like the briefing Dooku and Grievous had just gotten from the ill-fated Admiral Talzikan, nothing even like the much more comprehensive briefing Grievous had been seeking in the base's operational center before he'd been so rudely intercepted. This was an outlining of intent to bring down entire star sectors, to sow terror upon hundreds of worlds and billions of inhabitants, and to ultimately conquer the galaxy itself. The words fell as welcome rain upon the two listeners. Their eyes glittered feverishly, strangely akin though so different. Both of them felt humbled anew by their master's grand vision, and proud and privileged to have been chosen to execute his plans. When Sidious brought up an image of a galactic star chart, to better illustrate his objectives, both Count and cyborg leaned forward eagerly, as if to already grasp the targets in question.

"The Corellian trade spine," Sidious declared, indicating one of the major trading routes linking many of the most important worlds of the Republic. "This will be our key. Conquer it and our way into the Core will be clear."

Grievous trembled, the quiver of a volcanic mountainside about to blow. "I will turn it into a river of blood, my lord," he exclaimed.

"Yes, good, good," said Sidious, "and in time it will bear you to Coruscant itself. You will walk on that world, General. I have foreseen it."

Grievous saw it too. He saw himself striding defiantly across the face of the planet, its citizenry fleeing before him or cowering in whatever bolthole they'd managed to scrounge. And he saw himself in the Jedi Temple, one foot clutching the torn chest of the last slain Jedi lying before him; all of them dead at last, no one left to oppose him. Such were the dreams of a killer cyborg.

It was the first and most important meeting Grievous would have during his short time at Nee'port and in retrospect it would be the only meeting of any true consequence—all the rest he considered mere busy-work, meetings to get his ships repaired, to authorize certain projects, even (most annoyingly) to tend to his political obligations as the deputy leader of the Separatist Council. The only thing Grievous came to think of as being more useless and annoying than the political meetings was the casual associated socializing which Dooku demanded of him on several afternoons, when he had to accompany the Count while he walked aimlessly about near the base's wardroom or in the observation domes and pretended to be pleasantly surprised when he met the inevitable occasional important guests and dignitaries. Dooku would always introduce his Supreme Commander with great pomp, and after nodding curtly, Grievous would then have to stand there bored out of his skull, listening to inane small talk he wanted no part of and refused to participate in, having to tolerate the constant sneaking glances and outright gawks of anyone passing by. Before long, word got out and visitors actually began seeking them out, all for the vain pleasure of getting to meet Count Dooku and his elusive metal warlord, and then Grievous thought he would go mad, having to listen to all the inanities squared and tripled many times over as whole clusters of people fawned around them. At least no one tried to touch the cyborg. Even more so than being a poor socialite, he was a total failure as a huggy person.

Then there were the media encounters. The first time, it was turning around in one of the observation domes to behold a blue-skinned humanoid man pointing a camera at him. Grievous didn't like having recording devices aimed his way any more than he liked having people gawk at him. He'd taken an aggressive step towards the man, growling, "What do you think you are doing?"

Dooku had halted him. "Easy, General. Just a few visuals for our news agency," he'd explained. "I'm sure many people will be pleased to see one of the heroes leading the movement they support so diligently."

Grievous had seen the security badge and credentials on the man's jacket and swung part-way back to the window, far enough to make it clear that he had no intention of answering any potential questions while at the same time offering his profile so that the cameraman could get his footage. An annoyance on top of annoyance, but a necessary one, Grievous supposed. He didn't know yet that the clip of his initial turn and apparent lunge towards the camera was destined to be deliberately leaked, sans sound, to the Republic within a few days, and that it would become infamous as the first good clear visual to put a face on the enemy who'd torn Oronaciem apart, an enemy whose actual ghastly countenance for once exceeded everyone's most horrific imaginings. There would be much more footage of the General in the months and years to come, but for many Galactic Republicans this first glimpse would remain their defining image of him: a dark, becloaked, hulking figure which slowly extended a terrible, skull-like face to one side and then swung round to reveal its body, a nightmare apparatus of metals and plates and grasping claws, just a fighting machine of some dreadful new type, surely, yet the eyes burning within the deep-set sockets of its head were somehow hideously alive. It was the General's sulphurous eyes, hatefully glaring out from where life had no business residing, that would come to often frighten people the most.

On Grievous's last day in port, just hours before he was scheduled to leave, Count Dooku appropriated the moon base's gymnasium and gave his Supreme Commander an extensive session of lightsaber training. They fought together for a long time, duel after duel, with Dooku uttering a string of criticisms throughout and issuing more comprehensive critiques whenever they temporarily stopped. Grievous didn't mind. All of Dooku's fault-finding had to do with minor matters. Grievous knew he'd mastered the basics and that the Sith Lord was just trying to refine his techniques and bring them into line with his own exacting standards and fastidious preferences. Dooku still didn't like that Grievous's style suffered from what the Count perceived as a woeful lack of finesse. He wouldn't admit that the cyborg's strengths—his sheer power, endurance and amazing agility—were becoming ever more effective as Grievous's ability to manipulate his body grew more practised and swift. Grievous could tell he was getting better just the same, however. He knew it from the way he could now make Dooku step back at times when they sparred, in how the human had to work harder now at containing him even when their swordplay was one-on-one. It always gave Grievous a thrill whenever he was able to force Dooku to yield, even a little, and it would be coupled with a rush of gratitude for the skilful training he was receiving; yet at the same time, he also felt a growing disdain for his master, that he refused to acknowledge the cyborg's own special, obvious improvements.

As the afternoon wore on, Grievous began fighting with his mag-lock feature switched on, anticipating that Dooku would soon attempt to Force-knock him off his feet in order to end their training session, as he usually did, but the Count seemed disinclined to even try. Grievous, heartened, began pushing for a match during which he'd be allowed to use more than one lightsaber.

"I was able to engage and defeat four Jedi Knights at once the last time I fought in the field," Grievous said. "I would appreciate it if you would assess some of the new routines I used."

"Yes, I thought you'd want that. I've already arranged for a special practice for you," Dooku replied, rather cryptically. And then, lifting his head to look past the cyborg's shoulder, he added, "Ah! Here she is. Right on time."

Grievous turned his own head sharply. Asajj Ventress had entered the gym and was walking up to them.

He looked back at Count Dooku with anger and disbelief. "You expect me to learn from a mere trainee?" he exclaimed, his words dripping disgust.

"Don't be so hasty in dismissing Miss Ventress's abilities, General, " Dooku retorted mildly. "Like you, she has an affinity for using multiple weapons. And she has the advantage of possessing considerable command of the Force, something you droids will never be privy to."

Asajj smirked upon hearing this. She couldn't have asked for a better, more public validation of her own opinion. And the makeshift droid in question, he was just standing there stunned, eyes glazing over, as though utterly unable to formulate a reply in his defence, and really, how could he? Only Dooku, the Sith Lord, with his fully developed Sith command of the Force and ability to detect its faintest ebbs and ripples, sensed what was really going on within Grievous and saw him suddenly emerge as a literal white-hot flare of rage upon the inner mappings of the Count's psychic mind.

"Shall we?" Dooku went on. "Considering your apparent past mutual eagerness to compare your fighting skills, I thought that the two of you would enjoy the opportunity to do so under more…civilized circumstances."

Another smirk from the Rattataki woman. As if the wretched droid could comprehend civility of any kind! She halted a couple of meters away from Grievous and drew both of her distinctive curve-handled lightsabers slowly, igniting the crimson blades with a flourish. Oh, she was going to enjoy this all right, now that Dooku would be present from the start to ensure that the misbegotten metal brute played fair for once.

"No tricks this time, General," she warned, her derisive tone making a mockery out of his rank. "You won't find it so easy to—"

Grievous suddenly lashed one foot out at her. She jumped back, shocked. The vicious talons had almost gotten her. She'd just learned that he could reach much further with his legs than with his arms. Asajj flushed with indignant resentment and her hands tightened angrily on the hilts of her weapons. If that was the way he wanted it, fine. She'd hurt him now, if she could.

He drew two of his own lightsabers, finally, moving with a peculiar stiffness that Asajj misinterpreted as reluctance. Dooku looked on with keen interest. He'd let his Dark Jedi disciple believe that he'd orchestrated this match for her benefit, so she would have a chance to properly out-duel and thrash the cyborg as he deserved. In reality, he'd arranged it because he was fed up with having to monitor his two minions and trying to keep them apart whenever they came within shouting distance of one another. Sometimes it was easier to just let a couple of curs fight it out… Dooku thought he already knew how this particular contest would end, but was unsure as to its length and specifics.

Asajj slid sideways, trying to coax her adversary into striking at her, so she could gauge his ability. She'd fought a great many opponents over the course of her hardscrabble life and was very, very good at what she did. Her confidence was high and she trusted Dooku, her mentor, to referee and force Grievous to face her, if need be. She thought Grievous something of a sneaking coward, efficient enough when he could use underhanded tactics and surprise, but apt to fold when made to fight honestly. She also didn't believe that any droid's—or cobbled-together half-machine or whatever he was—that his lightsaber skills could possibly match her own.

"Not so eager now, are you?" she taunted. She jabbed at him with both blades and he turned the blows aside, automatically, still moving with that weird robotic stiffness, his stare as flat as his lack of animation. As duels went, this one was getting off to a disappointing start, she thought. "Maybe you'd rather be fighting Durge," Asajj mused aloud. "I think he's more your style. Another dumb, half-droid—"

Grievous exploded.

One second he was just standing there, yellow eyes fixed on her as she poked at him, the next flying through the air at her, feet first. She dodged in the nick of time and whirled on him, to confront him, and found him right there on top of her already, with both lightsabers coming down at her head. She ducked again and the two blades whooshed right past her face—they would have crisped her hair, if she'd had any. Asajj retreated, to get back into position, but Grievous chased right after her. His eyes were blazing with crazed, murderous fury. His rigidity was gone, replaced with all the fluidic athleticism he was capable of and the relentless drive of an enraged predator, and Asajj suddenly realized that this was no sparring duel, there was not going to be any feint and parry, no trading of moves, no sportsmanship and no honour. It was a death match. Grievous was fighting without restraint, with no thought guiding him save a berserk lust to destroy, and if he could break through her defences and catch her off guard, he would kill her.

"No! Wait! What are—" Another smashing blow, that almost sent her to her knees. She'd had no idea he could exercise such strength. He pounded on her like a thing possessed, the way the Jedi padawan, Anakin Skywalker, had frighteningly whaled on her just before he'd tried to send her plummeting to her death. Asajj jumped back once more as soon as she safely could, needing to get away from Grievous to marshal her own strength, to regroup. The problem was that Grievous could jump too. He could match her leap for leap, his machine reflexes making him equally fast, and she'd no sooner landed than he'd be right there again, thudding down and slashing at her, giving her no respite whatsoever. He pursued her all round the gymnasium, the two of them moving in fits and bounds, and all the while Dooku watched with calm, cool eyes, his lips slightly pursed in concentration.

Asajj wanted to use her Force abilities to fling Grievous aside or hurl an object at him, anything at all to throw him off stride, but she never got the chance—it took all her power just to stay ahead of him and ward off his attacks. She'd thought him nothing but a droid, and now she was learning to her peril and dismay exactly what advantages a droid body had when directed by living intellect and limitless rage. She glanced at Dooku, seeking help, some intervention at least, and during that split second when her attention was diverted, Grievous uncoupled his right arm and shifted his lightsaber to his upper hand alone. The lower hand he bunched into a fist which he pistoned at Asajj's face in a vicious uppercut.

He clipped her right under the chin. The woman went flying, cartwheeling back, head over heels. Her body slammed down and slid long meters before coming to rest in an ungainly sprawling heap, and Grievous pounced on top of her.

Dooku cried out sharply. "Stop!"

Grievous gave not the slightest indication of having heard. He crouched eagerly over Asajj's fallen body. One arm went back, the lightsaber lifting. Dooku raised one of his hands, prepared to exert his Sith powers, and tried one last time to command the cyborg by voice alone.

"General Grievous! STOP!"

It got through. Barely. For long seconds Grievous stood wavering, shuddering, torn between bloodlust and obedience. Then, with a strangled oath, he sprang away from his downed opponent and began marching out of the gymnasium, deactivating his weapons as he strode, unwilling or unable to spare Dooku a single backward glance. The Count let him go. He could sense how tenuous the General's control was at that moment and understood that it was only by removing himself from the scene that Grievous could refrain from murdering Ventress or even (the Sith Lord noted with a certain grim satisfaction) attacking Dooku in her stead.

The Count called for several service droids to join him and had a look at the Ventress woman while he waited. Grievous had left her in a bad state again. She lay conscious but moaning, her eyes rolling and out of focus, utterly unaware of her surroundings. Dooku thought that Grievous might have fractured her neck with his violent blow, not badly enough to paralyze her for her limbs were still twitching in a spastic, uncoordinated way, but enough to disable her for an easy kill. It would also be enough, Dooku adjudged, to finally put an end to any future petty squabbling between the two. He was certain that Ventress would never voluntarily go near Grievous again.

The droids arrived. Dooku ordered them to take the woman to the infirmary and get her fixed up. Her head lolled as they carelessly picked her up. Blood dripped out of her slack mouth and onto the deck. Pathetic, Dooku thought. She'd had such promise once. Now she couldn't even hold her own against a half-alive, experimental biodroid who was as Force-insensitive as a piece of furniture.

Dooku began considering whether it mightn't be time to start watching for an opportunity to cut Ventress loose…

As for Grievous, he'd already returned to his ship, the Invisible Hand, to isolate himself in his lofty quarters where he could pace and pace, still vibrating with arrested fury. He was wishing he'd disobeyed Dooku and tried to kill Asajj, for he sensed now that he would not have been unduly punished if he had, and the satisfaction he would have gotten out of ripping her apart would have been well worth suffering a blast of Sith lightning and the Count's most scathing tirades. An opportunity wasted, that's what it was. Like Dooku, Grievous was certain Asajj would never come near him again. If she recovered, that was, something he didn't care about one way or the other.

Grievous let his flagship's captain take care of leading his fleet out of port at their scheduled departure time an hour later, and morosely watched the moon base and then the moon and Nee'port itself fade away into the distance. Count Dooku had not tried to contact him before he'd left, for which he was grateful—Grievous didn't think he could have been at all civil with his master. Gradually, the big sleek cyborg calmed down. He began to think about his new orders, always a good way to relieve the gnawing restlessness that constantly ate at him. Someday soon he would wield his fleet down the length of the Corellian trade spine like a murderous scythe, and then—Coruscant, the heart, his to take. The pleasant anticipation of it all soothed away the last of his agitation like nothing else.

Grievous decided to bump up his latest bacta treatment again and get that out of the way before settling down to work out his latest campaign plans, and called for his physician to come and look after him. He was soon meeting with her down in the infirmary and watching the Neimoidian medical staff do their resigned temporary shuffle out of their workspace, a sight he never tired of. Lissa was wearing a new type of jumpsuit, one finally tailored for her human dimensions instead of making do with the usual Neimoidian uniform garb, he noted. His scientists and other civilian staff must've also done their share of replenishing supplies and niceties, he thought, then dismissed the topic as being of no further interest to him. Grievous was not much for spit and polish anyway, although he did have a very healthy belief in the old school of command whose adage was 'when I say jump, you ask how high'.

Lissa, who'd just earned another round of ribbing from her Geonosian boss because of Grievous's apparent eagerness to be treated by her, was in a cheerful mood and had to restrain her natural inclination to engage her patient in a round of chatty small talk and queries before getting started. She compromised by once again expressing her pleasure over his diligence in adhering to his schedule and asking him a single question, how he'd been feeling. Grievous replied with a noncommittal grunt and a "fine", then let her know he'd had enough personal interaction by barging on ahead into the autopsy room. Lissa, sighing, followed him in.

Grievous had somehow gotten grimier than usual and some of the smudges looked quite greasy. Lissa turned the water temperature up to better help get the dirt off. There was no need to ask whether he found it too hot. He slumped completely almost the instant the steamy spray began sluicing over his droid body, with every indication of thoroughly enjoying the heat, and when Lissa cleaned his head, he inclined his face into her hands as if to encourage her touch. Mightily pleased by his small gesture of trust, she rubbed over the elegant mask with a bit of chamois and then just her fingers for a long while, and afterwards used a small towel she'd tucked into a back pocket to blot up a little water that'd snuck past her protective efforts and trickled into the carved sockets. Grievous kept his eyes closed throughout, and his whole attitude seemed so tranquil and his carriage so slack that she wondered whether he hadn't perhaps learned to sleep in micro-bursts and was doing so now.

One of his chest plates had a net of fresh scoring on it. Lissa had to work at getting off the dirt there—it'd gotten ground into the fine lines. She thought he might have taken a close shot from a blaster or a couple of lightsaber strikes to his side, it was hard to tell. The ceramic duranium was so durable that it tended to spread the impact.

"Is something wrong?"

Lissa turned her head with mild surprise and found herself gazing straight into Grievous's right eye only centimeters away—he'd swivelled his lowered face her way just far enough to be able to look at her. There was nothing sleepy about the expression in that bright, watchful eye, either. He'd been wide awake the whole time despite the relaxed droop of his body and was clearly wanting to know why she was pausing so long over one specific part.

"There's nothing wrong, not exactly, General," she replied. "It's just that there's been quite a lot of damage done to this right chest plate of yours since I last examined you. I was just getting a proper look at it."

"Has it weakened my armour?"

"No, it's only surface damage and very shallow. Strictly wear and tear."

"Then leave it be. As long as it doesn't affect my functioning in any way, I want it left alone. I don't want you bothering with any wear damage on my MagnaGuards, either."

"Of course, sir, I understand. Anything cosmetic I'll just note and monitor. I won't try to fix it or spruce it up."

"Correct," Grievous said, and closed his eye again and turned his face away and lapsed back into silence. Lissa looked at his curved profile with thoughtful interest while she resumed washing down the side of his chest. She'd known individuals from other species that took pride in their scars, but this had to be the first time she'd known anyone who extended such pride to damage incurred by the droid body they happened to be living in, and full droids he considered members of his general staff to boot!

Grievous was quiet and cooperative for the rest of his session and didn't tense up or jerk away once, not even when Lissa treated his eyes and palpated the flesh around them. She felt good about that. His vitals and organics looked good, too, his heart thudding strongly through the abnormally slow rhythm that was normal for him, his eyes clear and healthy, his breath coming easily—she had to be doing something right. The temptation to open up his skull and toss in an extra brain examination was very great, but she restrained herself, afraid his suspicions might flare again if she broke the routine they'd established, and in the end sent him off with the mystery of how his excised scars had healed still locked away within that armour-plated head of his. Next time!

TBC


	12. A Dinner With Dooku

Man! For any of you who thought this story was slow before, I'm sure you'll find that this chapter will be the one that brings it to a screeching halt. Therefore, warning: double dose of drama and possible boredom ahead. It also, oddly enough, turned out to be the most fangirly segment I've written to date and I'm honestly not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, I hope you enjoy it. It's no MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, but I did my best.

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 12 – A Dinner With Dooku

Lissa Veleroko had managed to snag a lot more than just a new jumpsuit during her time in port. Once the fleet was underway again, the very next afternoon found her back aboard the Invisible Hand, rummaging through two pallet-loads of boxes that had been dumped in the Geonosians' battle duty workshop. She soon found and began pulling out what she was looking for and began piling the still-packed equipment on a big new cart with adjustable shelving. Her two biodroids, Trigger and Gregory, assisted her. It wasn't too often that she got the chance to bring the two along to exclusively help her out anymore. They spent more time working with the Geonosians nowadays than they ever did with her.

By the time they got the load pushed out of the shop to ferry it along the perimeter of the flagship's enormous main hangar bay and then up to Lissa's office, a new commotion was underway halfway across the hangar floor. A sizable vessel had apparently rendezvous with them while they'd been dickering about in the workshop, and maintenance droids were just in the process of guiding a large antigravity sled with a personal spaceship of some sort parked on top through the shielding of the bay's exterior hatch and onto the hangar floor. The spaceship looked as though it might have been a fighter, built to accommodate a pilot. Lissa had never seen anything like it, but then, she better knew the different types of purely droid starfighters. Manned ships were of lesser interest to her.

A handsome personal shuttle had already landed in the hangar too, close to where the sled was being parked. While Lissa watched, a living figure suddenly walked out into view from behind it and she felt a jolt of unexpected pleasure. She knew only one human man who could pull off wearing a cape with such aplomb. It was Count Dooku.

He soon noticed her and began walking over to her. Lissa gave her droids a heads-up as he approached. "Behave yourselves now. That's General Grievous's boss," she told them.

Gregory scrutinized the advancing figure from his usual hovering position. "He seems okay even so," he pronounced.

Lissa was again struck by the Count's air of youthful strength as he strode up. He inclined his distinguished head and exclaimed, "What a surprise to find you here, Miss Veleroko. I am pleased to see you again."

"How do you do, Count Dooku? I'm surprised too. I thought we'd left you back at the Nee'port moonbase."

"I was scheduled to depart last night," he said.

Lissa formally introduced him to her droids. "This is Count Dooku," she stated, "the founder of the Separatist movement and leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems."

"You flatter me," the Count murmured. He inclined his head again.

Trigger said, "Good afternoon, your grace."

"Hi," said Gregory. "How are ya?"

Lissa fought a grin and told the two to finish bringing the new equipment up to her office and to wait for her there, then turned back to Dooku. She wasn't about to get caught with her attention misplaced a second time. The Count was watching the droids toodle off, looking faintly bemused.

"What an unusual pair of machines," he remarked. "Would they be biodroids?"

"Yes they are," Lissa confirmed happily.

"Your own designs?"

"Yes, sir. They're both experimental prototypes."

"Indeed. Then you must appreciate the irony of having been recruited by yet another unique prototype."

"Oh, I certainly do, Count Dooku. It also seems to be a source of great hilarity for my Geonosian colleagues."

"Yes, I imagine it would be," Dooku agreed, his amusement now genuine, lips parting to show his fine white teeth. His smile was charming. At that moment, Lissa found him entirely likeable. "You mentioned having an office," he went on. "Are you stationed aboard Invisible Hand now?"

"Yes and no. My usual assignment is still to work with Nagas the Patriot's science team aboard the droid tender. But General Grievous has also made me a member of his general's staff. I report here whenever the fleet's at battle stations or he has need of my services." She waved in the direction taken by her departed droids. "I just picked up a lot of new equipment back on Nee'port, to better run the General's diagnostics. He's quite diligent about wanting his droid components kept functioning at peak efficiency."

The bemused expression had returned to Count Dooku's face.

"My dear," he said, "do you mean to tell me that the General has appointed you his personal maintenance technician?"

"Um, actually, sir, the position's entitled 'personal physician'. And it encompasses caring for his elite staff as well as himself."

"Physician. He calls you that. His physician."

"Yes, sir. All the time," Lissa said, rather ruefully, recalling how Grievous had ingrained the term into her memory early on by hollering it at her during her first field foray. Dooku's teeth flashed again. He was not just smiling anymore, he was grinning. Then he laughed. It was such a cheerful, delighted laugh that even Lissa felt obliged to join in on the joke, even though it was on her.

"Yeah, the Geonosians like that part of it too," she admitted sheepishly.

The Count was still chuckling. "Forgive me, Miss Veleroko," he said, "it is not your part in the situation that I find amusing, merely that…" He paused to collect himself, leaned forward and added in a conspiratorial tone, "Well, he is quite the delusional creature, isn't he?"

Lissa received this statement with a degree of puzzlement, not sure at first what Dooku was getting at. Her only objection to being labelled Grievous's physician had always been that it made her sound as though she were pompously misrepresenting herself and pretending to have credentials which she didn't possess. It hadn't occurred to her that someone might think it inappropriate for a cyborg to even have a physician. Her own smile remained, but the warmth behind it began draining away as she kept thinking things over. She remembered how cold the Count had been towards Grievous when the cyborg had been injured and the way Nagas had described him treating Grievous in the Geonosian arena, and she suddenly realized that she didn't really like Dooku very much after all.

"Speaking of your patient, here he comes," Count Dooku said.

It was Grievous all right, gaiting rapidly out of one of the entrances off the ship's main corridor and angling straight for them across the hangar floor, footfalls loud and ringing upon the metal decking. As he came closer, he slowed and adopted a more upright carriage, still striding fast but with the cadence of a normal walk now. He held his head high and his cloak, its edges tugged back to lay over his shoulders, streamed away behind him. It exposed the whole of his superbly-engineered body, and Lissa, who hardly ever saw him walk so from a good observational perspective, thought he looked marvellous. Dooku, however, must've thought otherwise. She could see Grievous's gaze fix on his superior's face with almost nervous intensity as the cyborg came clattering up.

"My apologies, Count Dooku," he said as soon as he'd joined them, his accent causing his husky voice to dwell slightly on the human name, drawing it out. "I expected your shuttle to dock at my private entrance."

"That's quite all right, General. I knew you would correct your false assumption before long and so you have. In the meantime, I have been having an enjoyable conversation with your…personal physician. Another one of your Kaleesh vanities, I presume."

Grievous bridled. "She is a member of my staff," he said.

"Yes. So she has informed me. Well, I suppose we all have our little predilections. Even one such as you, General."

The two men continued to square off while Lissa, seemingly forgotten, was left to fret on her own. She knew she wasn't very good with social subtleties, much to her occasional chagrin, and this exchange was already beyond her. All she could tell was that something about her appointment ticked Dooku off, even though he'd laughed, and that Grievous was being defensive about it. Lissa hated being involved in spats, especially those she'd unwittingly helped create. She wished she could think of some excuse to slink away before the pair of them really got into it.

Grievous might also have wanted to avoid a quarrel—he responded by baldly changing the subject. "May I inquire as to the reason for your unscheduled visit?" he asked, voicing what Lissa had only hinted at before.

Dooku regarded him coolly. In answer, he lifted one hand and pointed past him at the antigravity sled that was still being manoeuvred into place in the middle of the hangar bay. The sled's contents meant far more to Grievous than it had to the human woman standing beside him. He drew in a sharp breath and exclaimed, "A fanblade!"

"Yes," said Dooku. "It was delivered to me at Nee'port yesterday evening, just a little too late to transfer to your own vessel before you'd left. My own people have already gone over it. I was told it is in perfect order and ready for use. You may have it if you like, General." The Count's eyes shifted so that he was looking at Lissa instead. "It is a new type of starfighter, another fine product of your Geonosian friends' engineering expertise. Only six of them have ever been constructed," he explained to her. He made a point of glancing back at Grievous, then dryly continued. "It seems that my Supreme Commander insists on continuing to endanger himself unnecessarily in certain ways, despite my wishes to the contrary, so my only recourse has become to equip him with superior weaponry and vehicles that allow him some hope of surviving his reckless spells. Plus which, the former intended recipient of this particular fighter…will not be needing it now."

Lissa felt even more confused. She'd gotten the starfighter part all right, but the rest sounded…well, like personal stuff she didn't understand or really need to hear. She could see Grievous peripherally out of the corner of her right eye and he didn't look very happy either—he was wearing his neutral expression, the flat, indecipherable one he adopted when trying to conceal his emotions. Dooku stared at him, his own expression gone distinctly frosty again.

"Shall we go and have a look at your new starfighter, General?" he asked.

"Yes." And then, after a beat, in a monotone as devoid of feeling as his carved duranium face, Grievous added, "Thank you, Count Dooku."

It was the least enthusiastic thank you Lissa had ever heard in her life. She almost felt embarrassed for him, and for Dooku, too—what in the galaxy was going on between the two of them anyway? But at least she was about to be out of it. The Count was stepping forward already, getting set to walk over to the contentious new starfighter, the fan-whatever, with his cyborg colleague. Then he paused.

"Ah, Miss Veleroko, before I forget," Dooku said to her. "Maintaining the fleet's heading will not unduly affect my own vessel's ultimate course for some hours yet. Would you care to have dinner with me this evening?"

Lissa suppressed what she really wanted to say, which was no. That would definitely have been embarrassing for Grievous, to have one of his subordinates snub Dooku in front of him, not to mention being professionally unhealthy for Lissa's own sake. She was stuck, and she didn't like it one bit.

"Why, thank you, Count Dooku. I would be honoured to accept your invitation," she replied, as pleasantly as she could manage, exercising a goodly amount of her own deception.

"Excellent," the Count said.

"Will General Grievous be joining us?"

Grievous's careful neutrality vanished instantly. His head swung her way. His sensor panels actually came forward a little in his keen surprise. Dooku did not react at all for a few seconds. When he did, it was with a short laugh, his decision being to treat her query as a joke.

"Really now, you of all people must realize that the General does not eat," he responded, smiling.

Lissa was ready for him. "The General may not partake of food in the usual fashion," she countered, her own manner still perfectly friendly, "but that doesn't also negate his ability to take part in dinner conversation or grace us with his company. Does it?"

Now Dooku was stuck. His smile faded. After a moment, he said, "If General Grievous believes that he can contribute something to our evening, then the invitation, of course, extends to include him, however—"

"I would like to come," Grievous interjected in a loud voice.

It was the humans' turn to stare at him. Well, good for you! Lissa thought. If she couldn't avoid what she hated, she would much rather continue listening to the two of them than have to put up with the Count alone—she had the sense that his dinner talk might express unpleasant attitudes she would find impossible to ignore if she were on her own. Grievous had unpleasant attitudes too, but he didn't verbalize them. Usually. She had no real idea of what to expect from Grievous in a social setting.

Dooku couldn't refuse Grievous's participation after that without appearing unbearably churlish and curtly informed the two of them that dinner would be promptly served at nineteen hundred hours and offered to send a shuttle to fetch Lissa from the droid tender at an appropriate time. He then summoned Grievous to follow him with a gesture that was almost as abrupt and rude as snapping his fingers, and the pair went off to finish attending to the matter of the Geonosian starfighter. Lissa was left free to resume her own business and hurried off to get her own affairs completed. The dinner invitation and the extension of it which she'd somehow managed to wrangle hung over her the whole time. She was always doing stupid, evasive things like that when she was flustered. She ought to have had the courage to deal with Dooku herself, really, and left poor Grievous the hell alone, yet there was no denying that the cyborg had volunteered to do his part, and pretty eagerly, too. Ah well, it would surely be an interesting evening, if not necessarily pleasant. It would serve her right if the two men did nothing but snark at one another all through dinner while she sat there like a lump and got battered from both sides.

Lissa managed to get her new gear stashed in record time and was soon back in her regular quarters aboard the tender, getting cleaned up and cheerfully putting off Gregory's frequent unsubtle suggestions that he be allowed to accompany her—Grievous, he disliked, but Dooku for some reason had appealed to the little droid. Afterwards, the woman sorted through the stash of new garments she'd just picked up at Nee'port's spaceport. Even if the Count's invitation was unwanted, its timing had been good. Until several days ago, she hadn't even had any casual clothes, her wardrobe having been limited to what she'd literally been wearing on her back the day Grievous had kidnapped her and whatever items of uniform work dress available through the fleet's stores had half-way fit her. She finally settled for a pair of black slacks tucked into high, real-leather boots and a tan and cream-swirled blouse left open at the neck to show off her good natural colour. Nothing too fancy, but it was as glamorous as her practical-minded nature would allow without delving into actual (and in her opinion, quite useless) formal wear, and she didn't think a simple dinner engagement, especially with someone she didn't much like anyway, quite warranted that.

A rather comical-looking service droid showed up at her door soon after that to escort her to the promised shuttle and then fly it over to Dooku's spaceship, which was holding station next to Grievous's flagship. The contrast between the two vessels could not have been greater. The flagship was all bristling armament and sweeping lines and hulking menace, a no-nonsense ship, obviously military. Dooku's ship was some private construct that looked quaintly archaic to Lissa's eyes, its exterior not at all streamlined and fairly dripping opulent adornments, the sort of thing that would have looked quite at home ploughing through ocean waves rather than outer space. It was just as sumptuously appointed inside as out and Lissa was not surprised to see what looked like real wood paneling and expensive brocade on the walls. Dooku just struck her as a wood and leather kind of guy.

The woody motif extended right into the dining room Lissa was eventually taken to, and the dining table proper and its accompanying chairs were of the sort that would have given a master carpenter and carver orgasms. Both men were already present and waiting and stood up graciously when Lissa was shown in. Dooku looked to be wearing a dark blue and black variant of the same things he usually wore, all of it cut from obviously rich fabrics and perfectly tailored for his still-good figure. Silver threading and accessories accented his outfit and drew attention to his own nice silvery hair, and Lissa had to admit to herself once again that, no matter what his age, the Count was one fine-looking man. As for General Grievous, he was wearing a new cape.

Lissa regarded him with astonishment. It was definitely a garment she hadn't seen before, styled much like Dooku's own cape and fastened on either side of his neck cowling, off-white in colour, almost ivory, with a bright crimson lining. Even more remarkable, his whole body appeared to have a distinct muted sheen to it, as though he'd had all his metal and duranium surfaces lightly buffed. A cyborg's way of dressing up. She hadn't thought he had it in him.

"How charming you look," Dooku said, bowing slightly as he greeted her. Grievous just bowed. He was wearing his indecipherable expression again and was impossible to read. Lissa murmured some inanity in response and they all sat down again and got right to it.

Lissa was a little surprised to find that she and Dooku had been seated at the opposing ends of the dining table and Grievous midway along one side. She wouldn't have put it past the Count to have placed her immediately to one side of himself with the cyborg parked off at the other end, where he would have been easier to ignore. But there was no ignoring him under the current set-up, given that he was the brightest, most colourful thing in the whole dark-hued room. Lissa snuck a few more glances his way as she waited for the service droids that had just entered the room to finish serving out the first course, small bowls of some steaming thick soup. Yes, Grievous was definitely looking glossier than he usually did. He didn't want her touching up any of the scratches, dings and dents on his armour or body finish, yet was willing to make an effort when it came to socializing with his boss…or her? or her and Dooku together? She didn't know. She really had no clue what normally went on in his head.

The soup was good, though. She said as much and the Count launched at once into a whole long story about the gourmet intricacies of its recipe and others like it, and began praising the next course, several appetizer tidbits, with equal enthusiasm as soon as it appeared. Lissa tried to change the subject. She didn't think they really needed to go on and on about any sort of food with Grievous sitting there empty-handed and asked instead about the starfighter Dooku had delivered—what was it the General had called it, a fanbelt? Grievous stirred and corrected her, and went on to tell her something of its specs, and after a moment the Count weighed in with his own information and opinions. It eventually turned into a general discussion about fighter types and their relative merits. Lissa could offhand think of about a hundred topics she'd rather hear people talk about over dinner, but at least it was a conversation Grievous could take part in and seemed to have a surprising amount of keen interest in.

"Did you learn to fly early on, General?" Lissa asked. "A lot of pilots I've known seem to have caught the bug when they were young, usually when they were still just adolescents."

"Yes, at home, one of our neighbours had…he had…" A strange look abruptly came into the cyborg's golden eyes. "No, it was…during training, military training…" he amended, his deep voice trailing off. Dooku's own eyes narrowed a little. He rubbed several fingers over his short trimmed beard.

"You learned during your military's version of officer training, I should think," the Count suggested mildly.

"Yes, that is right…" But he still seemed confused. Lissa regarded Grievous with some alarm.

"I, of course, learned at the Jedi Temple," Dooku went on. "I was ten, I believe, when I was allowed to solo my first fighter." The corners of his mouth turned up into another of his appealing smiles and his gleaming eyes sparked. "Young enough for you, Miss Veleroko?"

"More than enough," she replied, thought over what she'd just said, and inwardly winced. Ugh. That was one exchange which was way too open to misinterpretation. "You really grew up at the Jedi Temple, Count Dooku? I always thought Jedi weren't allowed to leave the Order."

"Oh, no no, of course we are. After all, trying to force a member to remain once they have decided to do otherwise would be tantamount to indentured servitude, don't you agree, Miss Veleroko?"

"True."

"It is a violation of the same principle which has forced this war, I fear. The worlds I represent wished only to secede in peace in order to form a new, more vigorous coalition. The Republic would not let us, and…well, you see what has happened."

Lissa said nothing this time. It all sounded a wee bit too simple the way he put it and she was in any case not informed enough about the subject to really have an opinion—some people even thought she was a fool when it came to politics, after all. (She glanced once more at Grievous as she remembered this, but he was still just sitting there, seeming oddly preoccupied.) Then they were all distracted by the service droids entering again to serve the main meal and Lissa for one was tempted enough by the tantalizing odours to shut herself up for a while and just eat. The food was, like all the rest, delicious. And it was strangely comforting to be able to identify what most of it was, for a change, something she was hardly ever able to do when dining with her Geonosian colleagues.

The dinner went not too badly after that. The two men didn't harp at each other the way she'd feared they would, and Dooku proved a polite and attentive host. He was attentive only to her, though. It soon became apparent that if Lissa didn't initiate it, none of their conversation would involve Grievous at all. Dooku never once attempted to solicit the cyborg's input on anything and Lissa suspected that the Count would have been happiest of all had the General never said another word all evening. She eventually settled for just sitting back for the most part and letting the Count talk on about himself and his beliefs. He was clearly very fond of doing that.

It wasn't until the dessert course was almost over that Lissa finally put her foot into it. The matter of the Count's former Jedi background came up again and she asked him to clarify something else that was Jedi related.

"The energy weapons you use, the lightsabers, Count Dooku—I always thought that only Jedi could use them. But that's not true, is it? I mean, General Grievous uses them and he's not a Jedi." She shot a glance at the silent cyborg. "Er, you're not, right?"

Dooku chuckled and supplied the answer himself. "I should think not," he remarked dryly. "The General is merely one of my students. The art of lightsaber combat can be learned by the occasional non-Jedi if they are properly taught by a Master such as I. What the Force-insensitive can't do is construct such weapons themselves. They may wield them, but they can't make them."

Lissa looked over at Grievous again. He looked back, his eyes smouldering under the subdued lighting within the room like slow embers. She recalled the grisly setting she'd found him in back on Oronaciem, the dead clone troopers and Jedi heaped all around. "I'm guessing that General Grievous must be your best student," she said.

Dooku paused a moment before answering. "He is the best for what he is," he allowed.

It was the second time Lissa had heard the Count attach an odd stipulation in reference to the cyborg. "What does that mean exactly, 'for what he is'?" she asked. "For a Kalee you mean, or—?"

"I meant, for a non-organic, Miss Veleroko. My other students have always been normal flesh and blood beings. General Grievous is self-evidently not."

Lissa frowned. "Oh, but he is organic in the important ways, sir. He still has an intact brain. He still thinks and experiences emotions. That makes him as much a person as you and I. Why should it matter if the General has cybernetic implants?"

The Count's own visage altered slightly. Grievous, who'd perked up as soon as Lissa had asked Dooku to explain his phrasing and who'd been following their exchange with great interest, knew the look well. It was the expression Dooku wore when he was politicking, when he wished to exert his opinions and sway his audience while at the same time remaining entirely affable and reassuring.

"It matters, my dear, because all diminishments of the flesh diminish the soul to some degree. I would have thought that someone in your field would be in a unique position to appreciate this."

"But that's just it—if anything, it proves the exact opposite to me," the woman persisted. "I've come to believe that one's soul resides strictly in the brain. All the rest is really just extraneous, it's just a support structure, something that the mind uses with which to interact with the outside world. What that structure looks like, what it's even made of, doesn't impact on the mind at all, as long as it works according to the mind's directives."

"My belief," Dooku countered, "is that one's exterior is a reflection of the mind. And if that exterior is damaged or maimed or lessened, so too is the mind within."

"But that's—I'm sorry, that's just crazy! It doesn't even make any biological sense. What possible difference would it make to me—me!—the person within, if I had, say, a cybernetic leg? Yes, it would look different, but it wouldn't make a difference, not when you speak of a person's soul!"

She rattled on, becoming more and more agitated. Both men stared at her with varying degrees of disbelief. Grievous was even startled—she was defying Dooku! Of course she had no idea of what he truly was or the depth of power he commanded, but still! Who'd've thought the nondescript little thing had such fire in her?

Grievous began to get a little worked up himself. He'd been feeling strangely all day, ever since he'd first seen Dooku and Lissa standing together in the hanger bay of the Invisible Hand, and was just starting to understand why. It had to do with what the two of them represented. Dooku, his master, had been expertly demeaning him for so long that a small, secret part of him had begun to agree with such assessments and feel shamed by his cyborg body, so that his retaliatory rages, when such occurred, were now redirected at anyone or anything but the Count himself. Lissa, his physician, had much more recently offered him a different perspective and way of regarding himself, one based on matter-of-fact acceptance and logic, and it was a viewpoint he liked and was beginning to believe in more and more. It just made sense. The woman was right. Why should he feel ashamed of his changed exterior? It hadn't altered what he was inside (or so he believed). He was different now in how he looked and in what he could do, but he was still Grievous, the Grievous of before! He stared hard at Dooku, his manner defiant. The Count was still watching Lissa hold forth, having shifted into listening with that polite, practised, feigned impression of interest which Grievous knew to be no real interest at all. He was just letting the woman ramble on, his own mind already made up and closed, pretending to consider what she was saying while he waited for her to finish.

"I'm sorry, my dear, but I fear you haven't convinced me," Dooku said at last. "You forget, I think, that I have a certain special insight into the inner workings of most beings. And I can tell you that your point of view may be idealistic, but it is not realistic."

"But it's grounded in reality, nothing but reality, don't you see?" she cried. Frustrated, she wound the fingers of one hand through the shaggy bangs tumbling over her forehead. Her gaze fell on Grievous again. "General! Could you please come here and help me prove a point? Just scoot on over here and sit beside me."

Grievous was still so mystified and intrigued by her fierceness that he complied with her request without thinking. He hiked his chair over down the side of the dining table until he came up against its corner and Lissa shifted over too. She grabbed his hand that was closest to her and pulled it up, setting his forearm vertically above the table, resting his elbow joint on the wood. Once she had it in the position she wanted, she lifted one of her own hands and forearms and leaned it back against his own in an incongruous show and tell. Grievous bore her manipulations of his limb without the slightest resistance. Her small pinkish tan fingers looked tiny and helpless next to his own.

"Look here!" she said sharply. "All the bones, the tendons, the joints, the muscles, it's all perfectly replicated and works the same way. The commands to operate both of our arms come from the same exact source, a living sentient brain. What does it matter in the end whether the limb being commanded is one of flesh and blood or alloys and synthetics?"

Dooku showed a hint of genuine interest for the first time, not in Lissa's argument but in what she was doing. He looked the two of them over, making comparisons, contemplating the tableau they made. Grievous saw a very faint sneer pull at one corner of the Count's mouth.

A dull fury rose up in the cyborg. He was suddenly fed up with all of it, all of the slights and belittling comments and casual slurs. He burned with the desire to force Dooku to acknowledge him, not as a general or as a political ally, but simply as a man, just once. But Dooku wouldn't do that. The Sith Lord didn't even like to think of Grievous in that sense—he could see it in how Dooku was looking at him now, the disdain he thought he'd so cleverly hidden clear beneath his set expression and in the stiffness of his pose. He was probably disgusted with having to watch the woman touch him, Grievous thought, was put off by seeing one of his fellow humans have her precious flesh sullied by his metal hand.

A wicked notion abruptly occurred to Grievous, one born of anger and desperation. He shifted his chair and sidled closer to Lissa. He moved his elbow a little to prop his hand in a better position behind her own. Lissa had never feared his body. She didn't mind and never even truly noticed that Grievous was now all but brushing against her, hovering almost. Or that he'd lowered his head, his eyes slitting half-closed, and let one thumb fall down over her palm, then drew it up in a suggestive gesture.

Dooku assumed exactly what Grievous hoped he'd assume. Utter revulsion flickered across the human's face, too fast for Lissa to catch, but easily detected by the cyborg's alien acuity. Grim, sour triumph flooded through him. So! Not just a droid after all, am I! he thought with savage satisfaction.

The Count withdrew completely after that, no longer inclined to entertain a word the woman said, and even Lissa eventually realized that she was wasting her breath. "It seems that we'll just have to agree to disagree on this topic, Count Dooku," she said in conclusion, winding down, although her cheeks were still flushed with emotion.

"Yes, so we will," Dooku intoned, then, when he was sure that she wasn't looking, fired a contemptuous glare at his Supreme Commander. Grievous ignored it. He'd already gotten what he wanted from the Count.

Dooku didn't ask them to stay for the customary after-dinner drinks. As the two saw themselves out after having been very curtly dismissed from the dining room, Lissa wondered whether Grievous realized that Dooku had cut their evening short and started feeling guilty. "Well, that could have gone better," she admitted, abashed.

"Yes. It could have," Grievous agreed.

Lissa grimaced to herself and hung her head all the further. "I am sorry, General, really I am!" she exclaimed. "It's just that— I mean, he—"

"You may speak freely."

"All right! I will! I don't like that man, General Grievous, I really don't! Oh, I know he's your boss and all and you can't speak ill of him yourself, but I just don't like him! I don't like his attitudes, I don't like his snooty posturing, and I don't like the way he treats you. I think he's a bigot, is what he is, and—and…well, that's what I think."

She steeled herself for a deserved reprimand, but Grievous said nothing, nothing at all for a long while, and when he finally did speak again it was in a curiously mild tone of voice.

"I am surprised to hear you say all that. I've observed that most people find Count Dooku very agreeable. And I would have thought that you would appreciate some male company of your own kind."

"Ha! Not his!" Lissa crowed, much relieved that Grievous wasn't angry with her. "I'd rather spend an evening alone gibbering away to myself in my quarters than socialize with him again. Besides, I get all the male company I can handle in you."

Grievous jerked his head around sharply—had she realized what he'd done after all? He scrutinized her carefully, but no. Her words had been issued in innocence. There was no mockery in them. The General swung his face back into line. Was that how he was still perceived by everyone then, as male? His accident had neutered him as surely as it had robbed him of his ability to walk and the last of his residual hormones and urges had been drained away forever when what was left of his organic body was almost wholly stripped away during his operation. He'd come to think of himself as merely masculine.

They said nothing else to each other until they reached the bay where Grievous's and Dooku's shuttles were waiting. There, Lissa faced her superior again and gravely said, "Well, thank you for your company, General, and I apologize again if my actions at dinner caused you any trouble or embarrassment. In my defence, I think that at least it turned out to not be a boring evening."

"No, it was not that. And I would not expect the opportunity to stage a repeat anytime soon, if I were you, Miss Veleroko."

Lissa grimaced again, although this time it was laced with self-effacing humour.

"I won't. And that'll be fine with me, sir, believe me," she said. "Well, good night then, General Grievous. I suppose I'll see you next on Thursday, during your diagnostic check-up."

"Yes."

He watched her start walking to Dooku's shuttle, then took a sudden step forward. "Wait," he called. "Come on my shuttle instead. I'll take you over."

The woman regarded him with wonder and a little doubt. "If you're sure it's not an inconvenience for you…"

"It's not."

And so, in the end, she rode over to the droid tender aboard Grievous's shuttle. Lissa would have found it awkward to start a new conversation after having just made her farewells and the cyborg seemed to feel the same way—he kept his face turned to the viewport, looking out at his fleet throughout the brief flight. Yet once they reached the tender and had docked inside, he insisted on coming to the hatch with her and then stood in the doorway of his shuttle, waiting until she'd safely disembarked.

"Well, good night again, General," Lissa called up to him from the hangar floor, "and thanks for dropping me off."

Grievous nodded. She turned to go.

His husky voice rose up behind her. "Miss Veleroko?"

Lissa stopped and looked back over one shoulder, surprised. His white-caped, burnished figure was still framed in the shuttle hatch. "Yes, sir?" she asked.

"Thank you."

She was so shocked that he'd already shut the hatch and lifted off long before she could even think of formulating a reply.

TBC


	13. No Turning Back

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 13 – No Turning Back

The fleet sailed on for several days more after leaving Nee'port and the deceptive serenity of its passage was soon confirmed as being nought but the calm before the storm, just as most of its experienced personnel suspected. Nagas the Patriot passed on to his team that he'd gotten word that they'd soon be engaged in a long spell of fighting and advised those of his people who had the next battle duty to prepare themselves. That included Attenbro this time, one of Nagas's most trusted underlings and a friend. The Geonosian Citizen had become a friend to Lissa, too, and she was more than happy to join and help Attenbro out when he shuttled over to the Invisible Hand after supper that evening to do one last inventory of all the new kit and supplies in the Geos' workshop.

They weren't the only people taking a few extra precautionary measures. When the two arrived on the flagship, one of the first things that greeted them in the hangar bay was the unmistakable sound of General Grievous's voice bellowing away at someone. Luckily, he wasn't shouting at them. He was with a bunch of droids and some Neimoidians and several starfighters, which he'd apparently ordered towed out into the middle of the only clear flight space left on the entire hangar floor, all the rest being absolutely crammed full with row upon row of war machines all ready to roll. It was also luck—and a certain planned convenience—that the Geonosians' workshop happened to be sited at the very end right next to where said flight space was always left open. It meant that the two scientists would have access to a little unexpected entertainment as they worked away.

Attenbro, who appreciated big toys just as much as did many big boys, was intrigued enough by the goings-on that he began carrying out boxes to unpack on the hangar floor next to his shop, just so he could watch the show. Lissa followed suit, although she had more interest in watching General Grievous than in watching his machines. It was soon obvious that what the cyborg was doing was test-flying his fighters, one by one, and running the line crew through some sort of drills. He had quite the collection of personal ships, too. Lissa recognised the sleek, dull grey fighter he'd landed on Marku and the exotic fanblade Dooku had given him, and the small, more prosaic, brightly coloured one, that was a Jedi interceptor the General had captured himself and had modified for his own use, or so Attenbro informed her. She was pretty surprised to hear about the interceptor. Using an enemy's starfighter in combat didn't sound all that legit to her, but then, who would ever have the nerve to tell Grievous otherwise?

Invisible Hand's hangar bay blast doors had been partially withdrawn and the shields activated on both her port and starboard sides and Grievous was free to come and go from either direction. The point of this particular evening's flying festivities seemed to be to get in and out of the hangar bay as fast as inhumanly possible. Grievous would vault into one of his machines, blast off and out at top speed, and a minute later roar in from the opposite side and land, so recklessly that half the time a shower of sparks would spray up from one screeching landing pad or the other. The line crew was then supposed to rush forward and go through the motions of a brief inspection and refuelling and sometimes rearmament, by which time Grievous was usually out of his cockpit and down on the floor, yelling again. He was far enough away that neither Lissa nor Attenbro could ever quite make out what he was saying, but the tone of his voice and its volume always made it crystal clear that it was not complimentary.

"Poor guys," Lissa sympathized, meaning the Neimoidian crewman. "What in the world is he so mad about, can you tell?"

"Is the turn-around, is too slow!" Attenbro said in his fractured Basic. "When Grievous fights, he wants everything fast, fast. He not like the Neimoidians, don't move fast enough." Another withering string of harsh words wafted their way. Attenbro laughed. "Neimoidians never make him happy. He just like to yell at them."

Nice, thought Lissa, who couldn't help wondering which poor sap had done what to so sour him on an entire species.

On one thing, the two scientists soon agreed: The Geonosian fanblade was Grievous's prettiest starfighter. On the ground, the vessel had the vague form of a rosy-red shuttlecock with its flighted end folded down tight, an exotic design sporting a bulbous half-spherical front end holding the cockpit and then the long fuselage sweeping behind. Once in the air, its two wings would extend out top and bottom on a vertical plane until they formed a half-circular arc and it perfectly resembled its common name. Grievous always hovered the fanblade a few seconds, getting it in or out of flight mode, before he took off or landed again. This earned it top marks for making the most spectacular entrances and exits as well.

But even piloting exotic fighter craft and verbally abusing Neimoidians must've lost its charm after a while. Grievous eventually leaped out of one of his ships without flying into an immediate lather and was content to just watch as the line crew performed its simulated tasks. He even started losing interest—Lissa and Attenbro could see him looking their way for the first time all evening. It wasn't long before he came over to them.

The two civilians were currently sitting on the floor, each of them with their own data padd checklist, surrounded by a small sea of parts and doodads. As Grievous approached, Lissa looked to her Geonosian colleague, but he seemed not at all inclined to get up, so she followed his lead and stayed put. The only acknowledgement Attenbro did finally make was to just look up and say, "Good evening, General. You make lots of training today?"

"Yes." The bright yellow eyes looked them over. Lissa nodded, rather unsurely. Grievous nodded back. Evidently, he had no need of them and working on was thus okay with him. She relaxed and reached for another item on the floor, to compare with her checklist, not knowing that he was still looking down at her and at Attenbro too and thinking how weird it still was to see sentients with faceted, transparent wings and fur—on his world, the only creatures that had both traits were a lower class of animals called pickwits, a group of small evolved insect-like species. Grievous supposed he'd get used to it eventually. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd thought about such things, but seeing his two scientists together from such a strange perspective, the human with all that head hair loose and dangling down over her body as she sat sprawled over onto one haunch, the Geonosian squatting down on his hocks with those wings of his sticking straight out to clear the floor, couldn't help but draw his attention to their oddities.

Attenbro, who was just as oblivious to Grievous's musings as was Lissa, was feeling chatty and looked up again. "Is the fanblade go good for you, General?" he asked.

"Yes. It's a fine machine," Grievous replied. He fired a dark glance back at his collection of fighters. "I only wish my line crew were of equal quality."

"We maybe design you special droids for the job. Do it better."

"Anything would be better than what I have to work with now."

Lissa, listening, winced a little on the Neimoidians' behalf. She didn't think they were really all that bad, but then, she didn't have to depend on them to any significant degree. She supposed that if they were ever tardy about getting her supplies restocked or equipment serviced, that she'd be complaining about them too.

She kept an eye on Grievous while he and Attenbro continued to talk. It was the first time she'd seen him choose to interact with any of the Geonosians in a casual sense—he even looked casual tonight…no cape. Mostly, he seemed leery of the Geos, preferring to keep his relationship with them strictly professional, and Lissa really couldn't blame him. Grievous's recovery after his operation had surely been long and difficult. The Geonosians wouldn't have been either kind or sympathetic to his suffering, and he'd probably formed some very unpleasant associations, yet today, he was willing to set them aside and socialize with one of the men who'd had a direct hand in remaking him. Lissa guessed it had to do with their being on the cyborg's turf while off duty for a change or perhaps he was just plain lonely for some living company. It couldn't have been easy for Grievous, having to spend so much of his time with droids and residing on a ship with an alien crew he so clearly despised.

Lissa kept her silence until it finally appeared that Grievous was about to leave, then called, "Oh, General? Before you go, just a small heads-up on a memo I just sent you—for your diagnostic check-up tomorrow, you can come over to my office instead of down here in the workshop."

Grievous looked at her again. "You have your own equipment?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you have it set up?"

"All ready to go, sir."

"Good. Then we can do the check-up now," he decided. "Wait here. I will be back."

"Uh…what?" Lissa said to his departing back. She heard Attenbro start to snicker. "What the hell?" she exclaimed, more loudly. "Did he just say he wanted his check-up now?"

"Do it now, that is what he say," Attenbro confirmed gleefully. They both watched Grievous stride over to his starfighters and seconds later heard him lay on another round of blistering demands. The line crew started scrambling, attaching tow struts and anti-gravs to pull the fighters away. Lissa got up onto her feet as Grievous began marching back their way again.

"Sorry, Attenbro," she said. "Guess you'll have to do the rest yourself."

"Is okay." His small brown eyes rolled slyly towards the approaching cyborg. "He ask you build him accessories soon."

"Oh—shut up! You are such a swine," Lissa hissed. She said it with a big grin, though. Attenbro could be a pretty funny guy. Crude, but funny.

Instead of coming right up to them, Grievous simply swept by and commanded, "Let's go!", leaving it up to Lissa to run and catch up with him. No more following and breathing down her neck! It appeared that she'd been elevated to the status of his MagnaGuard elite, and like them, was expected to trail along in his wake right behind him…fine by her, but did he have to keep walking so darn fast?

He slowed and let her precede him once they reached the door to her office, and went at once to his big infirmary chair to sit down. His checks involved hard-wiring him to the diagnostic equipment itself and were always done with him in a seated position. They basically consisted of a thorough evaluation of the functioning of his electrodrivers and processors and his internal communications and neural net, both organic and artificial—all the different parts that coordinated to serve him in place of a full organic's muscular and nervous systems, and without which he really would be nothing but a static pile of components. But Lissa soon had him back up on his feet. She wanted to first see him tightly fold up one leg while standing on the other, then reverse the procedure, and then uncouple his arms, one after the other, while she watched. Grievous complied willingly. He supposed a practised eye might pick out some slight imbalance or roughness of action that he wasn't aware of yet.

He less understood the purpose of next being asked to turn his face away and touch several digits on his right hands together and then having to do the same while looking away from his left arms. Lissa watched again while he reintegrated his limbs, thanked him for his patience, and told him he could reseat himself.

As soon as Grievous had sat down and she'd pulled up the mobile cartful of diagnostic gear and begun wiring him up, he said, "Why did you do that, ask me to touch my fingers together?"

"Mm? Oh, it's a practical test of your proprioceptive sense."

"My what?" he exclaimed sharply.

"Your…spatial sense, I suppose you could call it," Lissa replied. "The one that lets you know where all the different parts of your body are in relationship to one another without having to look at them. You'd never be able to fight with lightsabers the way you do unless it was in perfect working order. Don't ask me to explain how it works either, unless you want me to start pulling out the microscopic schematics."

Grievous pulled his brows way down and trotted out one of his old litanies. "The Geonosians don't test me like that."

"I know. They depend on diagnostics alone. My feeling is that since it's your own Kaleesh brain that's still evaluating and acting on the data it receives, it's about time I added an organic element to your diagnostic checks. It's still possible for you to suffer from such things as mental fatigue or neurological disease and injury. Testing your spatial sense helps pick out impairments due to causes like that." Lissa busied herself with completing his connections, then added, smiling, "In humans, having to touch a specific fingertip to one's nose is a pretty good test for sobriety, too. It's amazing how difficult such a simple task becomes when you're wasted. I guess I won't have to worry about ever finding that kind of impairment in you, though."

He had no response for that and Lissa really wasn't expecting any. Her blow-up at the dinner with Dooku might've finally stirred Grievous into expressing some gratitude for her servitude and what he no doubt perceived as her soldierly loyalty to him, but it hadn't made him any friendlier. In his current state, Lissa didn't think he was even capable of friendship. His mind alterations had locked away most of the requisite emotions along with his personal memories.

Grievous sat quietly for the remainder of his session and Lissa was fine with that too. He didn't speak again until his checks were finished and she began disconnecting him, at which point he suddenly exclaimed, "Is that all?"

"Yessir. The new programmes run a lot faster than before. I'll still go over your test results in detail later on, of course, but would already have been alerted if any of the readings were off. I'm sure you're functioning just fine, General."

The cyborg remained seated, regarding her with that speculative air which always made her uneasy. What came of it this time was something she wouldn't have guessed at in a million years.

"Could you do my next bacta treatment now too?" he asked.

"Er…"

He'd just had one not five days ago! Grievous instantly picked up on her hesitation and frowned again.

"Is it too soon?"

"Um, no. No! Not at all. The more often, the better for you, actually." Lissa scrambled to make sense of his request and better hide her surprise. "Would you—like me to schedule your diagnostics and one of your bacta treatments together from now on, sir?" she tried.

"That would be convenient, yes," Grievous said.

"Ooo-kay," Lissa replied, still a little bewildered.

Grievous really hadn't had time to get very grimy since the last time she'd cleaned him up and whatever self-primping he'd done for the dinner, but Lissa started him off with a good wash-down even so, the same as always. On a hunch, she cranked the water temperature up again, and not only did Grievous slump down at once with evident relief, she could have sworn that he uttered a soft groaning sigh this time as he did so. It could have just been the whir of his servos, though.

He tilted his face into her hands again when she washed his head. He'd learned her routine and anticipated her several times more after that, twisting his neck to better expose the mechanisms before she reached for them, lifting his arms away from his sides without needing to be prompted, and Lissa began to feel absurdly touched. None of his behaviour was any more remarkable than that of millions of people who daily submitted themselves to their doctors and dentists, their hairdressers and hands-on therapists and cosmeticians, even their tailors, with equally considerate, unsolicited cooperation. But this wasn't just any person, it was General Grievous, who until a few months ago had detested the whole business of being cared for so much that he'd been compromising his health in order to avoid the Geonosians' attentions altogether. No matter what else ever happened between them, Lissa thought that this part of it was something she'd always look back on with pleasure, that she'd been able to finally break through the fearsome cyborg's wary distrust and coax his attitude around, just a little bit.

Grievous's helpful posturing even allowed her to get further in under his chest and back armour than usual and do a better job of checking the synthskin sack that housed his internal organs. Lissa'd been concerned about its integrity ever since it'd been torn open by that freak accident. She always made a special effort to feel over whatever external parts of it she could reach, using her sensitive fingertips to try and detect the slightest scratch or incipient fray on the resilient plastiform surface. So far so good… Beneath the cleansing spray of the water hose, which she kept directed over his body, it all felt as smooth as wet hot glass.

When she palpated a patch way in under his chest plate just beneath his metal armpit, Grievous extended his neck and began slowly hollowing his hunched back. Lissa regarded him with surprise. She couldn't be hurting him. All he had embedded in the synthskin back there were a few sensors apiece keyed to the usual pressure, movement and temperature settings, just enough to let him know if anything foreign was touching him. Of course that included her current hand, but it'd been a while since he'd reacted to her touch so strongly, and it wasn't even aversive exactly, not like when he'd first flinched and fussed about having what remained of his true face handled. He didn't even seem fully aware of what he was doing. He kept his eyes closed and didn't try to pull away at all, just stretched his neck out in that funny, flattening way.

She moved on and he relaxed back into his slumped pose, head hanging. Lissa was already chewing on a possible explanation and when she got around to his opposite side, took care to find and rub over the same relative area. Again his neck went out, the long face elevating into the vertical. Lissa struggled to keep her expression as impassive as possible. It was true. The Kaleesh General had a sweet spot, which had somehow survived through all that had been done to and altered in him, and stimulating it was provoking an involuntary response as surely as stimulating same on the side of a dog could make it scratch furiously with one foot and adopt a silly, lip-drawn grimace. She didn't dare let Grievous know that she knew and could only hope that he never fully realized how he was reacting—it was just too endearing, the first and only endearing trait of his which she'd ever discovered.

Her unexpected find kept her smiling inside all through the rest of his wash, and as soon as she had Grievous safely soaking away in his bacta tank, she hurried back to her office to pull and get ready all her data pertaining to her covert microsurgery on his brain. In the confusion engendered by his sudden unexpected demands, she'd briefly forgotten that this was one of his long treatments. She was going to find out in a very short time whether his excisions were healing or whether she'd just created new scars, and just the thought of it prompted a wave of sickening excitement, the same as when she'd initially decided to sabotage the Geonosians' work.

Lissa had to work at staying calm once she had Grievous out of the tank again and forced herself to give him a good long leisurely rinse and dry before popping his faceplate back on for the short trip back to her office. She got him settled in his chair, his faceplate off again and wired for remote speaking, his skull plate levered up and his head firmly secured, then pulled her screen and instruments into place and prepared herself for the moment of truth. What the scanner found in the next few seconds would determine the rest of her course of action.

What she found was nothing. Nothing at all. The spaces left in place of the excised nodules had completely closed up.

Secretive exhilaration replaced her nausea. Her hand had been sure. The healthy cells had already realigned so well that she could find no trace whatsoever of the scars' previous existence.

Lissa paused to have a swift, decisive debate with herself. There was a chance, just a chance, that the Geonosians would still buy three of the nodules spontaneously disappearing on their own. Such things happened in medicine. Tumours could shrink and vanish, scar tissue could dissolve and be absorbed. But more than half of the blocks they'd so carefully laid breaking down and disappearing…no, that they would never believe, and if they discovered what she'd been doing, that would be the end of her appointment and her life…that concern she willingly accepted and firmly put aside for the moment. Next, she considered Grievous. Had her tinkering had any beneficial effects? Impossible to determine…he wasn't talking, not yet. Had she harmed him? Would she harm him, if she carried on? She honestly didn't think so. She was just restoring what shouldn't have been taken from him in the first place…wasn't she? In the end, it was her sincere belief that she was doing no harm, not in any medical sense, that allowed her to give herself permission to continue. Lissa slaved her scanner's and laser's targeting systems together with grim determination and got straight to work.

She took out four more nodules, half of those remaining. She could spare the time—the preventative medications she'd applied had also done their job and there was considerably less degradation of the surface tissues than before. The entire organ looked better, its colour evening out and adopting the nice deep purplish hue that would have sent Lissa into a panic had it been a human brain she was looking at, but which was just right for one belonging to a Kalee. She hoped it meant that Grievous was also entering the final stage of his natural recovery, that his mind was finally physically accepting its extensive collection of implants and simmering down on its own.

As always, Grievous never felt a thing—he had no more pain receptors in his brain proper than did a human being. He never suspected anything either, not until she was almost done with him and was fastening his faceplate back into place, at which point Lissa's repressed excitement and guilt over deceiving him finally combined to alter the quality of her touch in some miniscule way. It was enough to alert his instincts, and as she leaned forward, centering his elegant mask on his head, his eyes opened and searched her own with far too much intensity.

Lissa covered by pretending to be giddily enthusiastic about the improved health of his brain's surface tissues.

"Would you like to see the comparative scans from your last two examinations, sir?" she offered brightly. The Geonosians probably wouldn't like for Grievous to see even external views of his implants, but Lissa was damned if she would withhold the images from him. It wouldn't violate anything classified, strictly speaking, and she felt he had a right to see them, the same as did any other patient. Grievous expressed interest and she showed him the final shots she'd taken after cleaning him up both times, pointing out the improved overall surface colouration and reduced inflammation about the implants themselves in the second image.

"I suspect that some of it's due to natural healing as well," she told him in conclusion. "If you were human, this is just about the stage, the twelve to eighteen month period, at which I'd expect to see a body adapt to its cybernetics for good. The adjustment is sometimes quite sudden, too. If there's been some problem with rejection, it's almost as if the flesh finally gives up and resigns itself, and after that any problems seem to resolve themselves."

"Mm," Grievous acknowledged. His gaze briefly rested on her again, still a little pensive, but no longer suspicious, and he went off a few moments later without exhibiting any further concern. Lissa indulged in a few hefty sighs of relief before she began cleaning up and resecuring her data. Even with his damaged mind, the General could be scarily perceptive at times. Now all that was left was to kick back and keep a careful eye on him, as much as she could.

She got her chance soon. Two days later, Grievous launched a major new campaign against the planet Cruysala, widely considered as one of the gateway worlds between the Mid and Outer Rims. The Republic had already stationed numerous forces on Cruysala and the fighting was fierce, both in space and on the planet. Grievous himself led the ground attack on the major governing city, where the greatest number of defending troops were concentrated.

Cruysala's technological level was modest. Lissa, deployed along with her usual battle droid defenders to accompany the General, was reminded of the very first world to which she'd been sent in her new position as Grievous's physician. Combat action was still ongoing, and Lissa's droid officer, Sunny, took care to keep her well back from the worst of it at first. Grievous and his MagnaGuards were fighting hard, engaging and killing many enemy soldiers themselves, Sunny reported to her, but she never saw any of it, just heard it and felt it, the small arms fire barking in staccato, the shells and rockets impacting in sharp explosions and distant roars that rattled the very ground.

The intensity of the nearest fighting quickly lessened. Grievous's droids had the Republicans on the run. Sunny allowed Lissa to emerge from the shop doorway they'd been using as cover and the little group stood on a ruined, deserted street, watching air battles erupt nearby as droid fighters began jumping Republic vessels trying to evacuate the remaining ground forces. They all ducked with practised speed when one air machine suddenly appeared and swooped their way, then popped back up just as fast when they saw it was just a STAP, a small, minimally armed aerial platform used by the Separatists for light patrol duty. Then Lissa's mouth literally fell open with comical shock. She'd glimpsed a flutter of grey and red cloth, a flash of bone-white armour as the machine streaked by overhead. Grievous? But how could that be? She prevailed upon Sunny to find out what was going on. If it had been the cyborg, so much for keeping up with him for a while!

General Grievous had just received word from a forward battle droid officer that Jedi had been spotted, was what had happened. The problem was that they were already out of range of any nearby ground forces and in the midst of retreating, about to board a waiting Republic gunship, and Grievous, driven by his ferocious, irrational hatred, was unwilling to trust in his air cover to intercept and bring the gunship down once it began pulling out. He'd grabbed a STAP off a droid soldier waiting for a break in the action and taken off to try and catch at least the Jedi himself.

The STAP, badly overloaded, laboured horribly beneath Grievous as he pushed it on at top speed. The platform had really only been designed for someone the size and weight of a battle droid and he was having trouble working the pedal controls with his oversized clawed feet, but still he charged on, oblivious to the machine's dangerous jittering and engine grinding. He swiftly reached and overshot the reporting officer on the ground and saw exactly what the droid had relayed mere seconds later—an enemy gunship lifting off from a narrow alley in between a partially destroyed office building and the framework of another under construction. And packed inside, standing back from the one wide-open side doorway, armoured clone troopers and several men in earth-toned civilian garb.

Grievous gunned the STAP straight through the new building's framework, dodging girders, ignoring the danger posed by his erratic steering. The gunship had gotten four stories up off the ground. A moment more and they'd be able to clear the top of the bombed-out complex behind them and angle away. Grievous fired up the STAP's two laser cannons, but couldn't target any better than he could accurately manoeuvre. All he really did was alert the occupants of the gunship that he was coming, and some of them began firing back through the open doorway, forcing him to take evasive actions.

Trying to turn the STAP made it slither sideways through the air and Grievous narrowly avoided smashing against an upright beam and then the front of the gunship itself as it rose before him. The vessel's doorway whipped past. He could see the slotted helmets of the troopers inside turning to watch him, at least two bare faces staring out. The STAP lurched again, tumbling out from under him, and with a convulsive thrust of his powerful legs, Grievous leapt off his destabilizing machine and straight into the interior of Republic gunship.

Instant pandemonium erupted. The shock could not have greater had a live nexu suddenly been thrown aboard into the troopers' midst, and just like that vicious felinoid, Grievous virtually clawed his way through the men, smashing them aside out of his way, not to kill them particularly but to get at the Jedi. Most he just flung back against the closed opposite side of the gunship. A few he pitched out to fall to their deaths. The Jedi went out too—voluntarily. All of them, three altogether, used their command of the Force to spring them over to the building under construction in a desperate effort to lead Grievous away and spare the rest of their troopers.

The big cyborg followed instantly. It was just what he himself wanted, to isolate and fight his hated enemies hand to hand. He reacted so fast that he caught the third Jedi in the very act of landing on one of the horizontal girders, and knocked him over and contemptuously slammed a foot on his chest, holding him down. The man screamed, hurt and terrified. It was a young human male and Grievous saw a thin braid plaited into his hair. A padawan! Useless! Grievous closed his grasping foot, crunching ribs, then shifted his grip to the man's knees and picked him up and bashed the struggling body down across the beam, shattering his back and stilling him forever. He let the corpse drop down to join the broken dying bodies of the clone troopers he'd thrown from the gunship.

The other two Jedi had jumped up several more stories and retreated further into the skeletal interior of the building, a grave error in Grievous's judgement. He was made for pursuits like this. The ability to climb and superb balance was built into him and part of his very nature. And clambering in after the Jedi would get Grievous away from the gunship, which was still hovering close by, refusing to abandon its two surviving officers. Grievous didn't think they'd dare fire in after him once he reached the Jedi. There'd be too much risk of hitting their own people.

Grievous leapt up a level and then horizontally, several times. He could see the Jedi standing together, resigned and waiting for him, and his excitement grew. Both looked older and experienced—another human with a bearded face and a big, furred, ursine alien which he recognized as a Whiphid. He'd already killed one just like it and happened to coincidently have that one's trophy lightsaber waiting right in his cape's weapons sheaths. Grievous felt a twinge of grim humour as he drew it and three others out for use. He wondered what this new Whiphid would think of being put to death by the blade of one of his own kin.

The Jedi came for him at once, their strategy immediately evident, trying to bracket him between them as they all clashed together on the same narrow girder. Grievous rose to the challenge. He found it an exhilarating new experience to fight in such a restricted yet exposed arena, to have to mind every step he took and administer every slash and parry with exquisite care and timing. The Whiphid turned out to be a defensive fighter and oddly hesitant. Grievous could have held him with one lightsaber even under his current difficult circumstances, and had no trouble at all keeping him back with minimal effort using two blades. He concentrated on the human male attacking from his other side. The padawan Grievous had killed must've been his. The man fought with an enthusiasm rare in a Jedi, his grief transmuted into uncommon rage. It made him a very sporting opponent and Grievous passed up several opportunities to wound him before finally spearing him through the heart, as a good foe deserved. He toppled off the beam still wearing an expression of righteous anger. Now it was just the confident Kalee and the hesitant Whiphid.

They both first paused momentarily, as if by mutual consent. Grievous slowly deactivated three of his weapons, one by one, and returned them to their pockets. He kept out only the green lightsaber with the oversized hilt, the one he'd taken from the Whiphid Jedi he'd slaughtered on Hypori, and when he brandished it before him, Grievous saw the alien's narrow eyes widen as if in unhappy recognition. Kin indeed, Grievous thought with malicious pleasure. This new Whiphid's lightsaber was green too and styled very similarly. Perhaps the two had even made their weapons together, in friendly rivalry.

Grievous pressed a fresh assault. With the other Jedi out of the way, he could come at his last opponent face-first, as he preferred. Wind whistled through the framework of the building, billowing out his cape, snatching at the Jedi's long fur and hooded cloak and skirt. Above and beneath them the main battle continued to grind down at a distance removed, its action seeming almost inconsequential, dream-like. The Jedi fought back hard. He was strong, but lacked the aggression to utilize it fully. Grievous could tell he didn't want to fight and had no taste for it. For this one, combat was just a necessary duty. And as they continued to feint and thrust and stab, the cyborg just toying with his foe the whole time, something else occurred to Grievous, the strangest sense that he'd done this before, elsewhere, and that it'd been just this easy. The notion distracted him and he swung further than he intended to, the tip of his lightsaber slipping down past the Jedi's block.

A sudden fireball exploded between them, shocking and blinding enough to halt them both. Grievous glanced over at the still-waiting gunship. Had they gotten desperate enough to take a potshot at him after all? He refocused on his opponent. The Jedi had inexplicably deactivated his lightsaber and was looking down at his still outstretched sword hand, his wide toothy mouth partway open in surprise. Or rather he was looking at what was left of his lightsaber—the Whiphid was holding nothing but a partial hilt, with smoke and sparks pouring out of its truncated end. Grievous had, for the first time, slashed right through his foe's weapon and activated some explosive reaction in doing so. He hadn't even known that lightsabers could explode, and from the look on the Jedi's short-haired face, he hadn't expected it either.

It was very rare for the cyborg to be caught off guard during combat and it was the Jedi's lucky day in that this was one of those occasions. He recovered first, dropped his ruined weapon, and bolted.

Grievous started and went after him. The Jedi was already three girders and a level's distance away—bulky or not, he could move! Grievous saw at once that he was trying to get to the exterior of the building's framework, for another pickup by the gunship, and he used his own speed and agility to cut him off. It took only four jumps. The big cyborg ran swiftly along the last beam until he'd intercepted the Whiphid's retreat, and the creature stopped and faced him, still a leap away on his own girder. Undeterred, the Jedi's already slitted dark eyes narrowed further and his under-slung chin lifted defiantly. Grievous slid the two big forward talons of both feet down over the edge of his support, anticipating that the Whiphid would try to Force-push him off the framework. Then he came under fire.

It was from the remaining clone troopers, standing in the open doorway of the Republic ship, hovering in perilously close and making full use of their opportunity to target him with their blasters. Grievous snarled and yanked his own blaster out as he ducked and wove his body without shifting his grip and warded off shots with his one active lightsaber. Two could play at this nonsense. If he had to, he'd jump back aboard and bring the gunship down this time, then take up the Jedi's trail and just hunt him down again.

Grievous's feet were suddenly yanked forward out from under him. It happened too fast for him to prevent himself from falling. He'd been expecting a Force-push, not a pull! Even so, his reflexes were still keen enough for him to snatch at and grasp the girder with his talons again as he plunged downward and simply swing himself around and up in a graceful backward somersault. A great mound of brown fur hurtled past above him as he turned. Grievous lashed his lightsaber out as he regained his position—too late! The Jedi was already clinging to the bottom of the gunship's open hatchway, the troopers unceremoniously grabbing great handfuls of his hair and skirt to finish hauling him up and inside. The ship rose away with reckless speed and rapidly spun, presenting its aft end, foiling the cyborg's attempt to leap back onboard or inflict any serious damage with his blaster. Grievous angrily fired after it nonetheless.

As soon as it was a safe distance away, the gunship stopped, hovered, and began turning back towards him. The General—and the escaped Jedi—hadn't achieved their respective ages without being able to recognize when they'd been fairly beaten. Grievous gave it up, crouched, and stepped off into space, dropping down towards the ground as fast as he could, breaking his fall with the occasional grab of a passing girder as the floors of the building framework whizzed past.

He dashed over into the neighbouring building with the gunship and its regrouped crew now in hot pursuit. They had time to fire a single missile after him, which exploded harmlessly in his wake, before he vanished from view, and then simply hung there in the air for a moment while they no doubt debated whether to chase him further or attempt to bring the remnants of the building down on top or him or rejoin the mass exodus still trying to flee the planet. Common sense finally won out. They lifted away. Grievous immediately climbed out of a ground window far away from the one through which he'd entered his brief refuge and stood watching the Republic vessel get away, feeling another surge of strange déjà vu as he did so.

Grievous returned to the construction site and retrieved the lightsabers from the two Jedi he'd killed. He also went looking for and soon found both parts of the ruined hilt dropped by the Jedi that had escaped him, and when he compared the damaged weapon with the similar one he was using, he swore volubly. Their styling wasn't just similar, it was identical. Blast the bloody thing—it HAD been the same Whiphid he'd left for dead on Hypori! He thought he'd slashed the creature's chest wide open, fatally wounding it, but its fur must've been thicker than he thought and it must've slipped afterwards into deep unconsciousness or a trance. I'd he'd had any inkling that it was still alive, he would have checked its eye reflex or cut it to see if it bled. Better yet, if he ever met the Whiphid again, he'd make sure to decapitate him. He'd like to see any Jedi of any species try and heal up after that.

He consoled himself with the thought that gossip about his attack on the gunship would soon be making the rounds and adding to his notoriety. It wouldn't hurt that he'd had a live audience to witness his slaying of a couple of Jedi, either. It had surely left the surviving Jedi and clone troopers dispirited, and with a little luck, their dejection would spread a long way.

Grievous checked in with his chief MagnaGuard and then, in rapid succession, with a number of his field and fleet commanders. All was progressing satisfactorily and on schedule. He called his MagnaGuards again, took a bearing, and stretched out in a leisurely, ground-covering trot.

He found them grouped together beside a newly arrived ops shuttle and temporarily stood down, having run out of things to destroy or kill. His physician and her guards had joined the squad and the woman was going over one of the combat droids with some of her equipment out. Grievous strode over to her.

"What's wrong?"

She glanced at the cyborg without seeming too surprised to see him safe and sound. "He took a direct hit to the chest. His back-up photoreceptor's broken. I'm not sure yet if the unit's reparable or salvageable."

Grievous nodded. He knew that the MagnaGuards, specifically manufactured just for him, were horrendously expensive and that procuring parts was always a concern. He approved of Lissa's frugal approach. While he stood there, she turned her attention his way and began looking him over too.

"Did you get your Jedi, sir?" she asked.

Grievous was taken aback. He had the woman pegged as a pacifist, which he could tolerate as long as she kept her views to herself and never tried to interfere with him. He'd gotten the impression she didn't want to know what he did, because it disturbed her, but supposed she might be worried about damage.

"I got two and they never touched me," he said shortly, and walked away before she could ask any more. He wasn't used to people questioning him about what he considered a very personal vendetta, his intention to do all he could to wipe out the entire Jedi Order.

The Republic army withdrew completely within the next twelve hours, abandoning Cruysala to its fate, and the planet surrendered. The native officials that came to deal with Grievous were as terrified of him as was the Jedi padawan he'd killed. They cowered before him, barely able to look him in the face, and averted their eyes from the dried gore on his lower legs. Grievous snorted at that. If they couldn't stand the sight of a little shed blood, it was no wonder they were such worthless fighters.

Grievous handed Cruysala over to a waiting private Trade Federation army and moved on to his next task, the subjugation of a neighbouring planet which the Neimoidians wanted for mineral harvesting and expansion purposes once they got their foundries up and running. The sentients on his new target were even more primitive than the Cruysalans and had barely gotten past discovering electricity. They weren't advanced enough to be useful slave labourers, yet possessed enough intelligence and natural belligerence to make real pests of themselves once the Neimoidians moved in. Grievous resolved the problem by administering a hefty dose of genocide from orbit. He never even set foot on the planet, just torched it.

Lissa came up to the bridge to observe the cyborg while he was directing his bloody solution. Grievous reacted by scowling when she first arrived, then ignored her. She soon saw that in a command scenario he was as high-strung and impatiently aggressive as ever and still resorting to bouts of mindless pacing whenever there was a necessary lull in the bombardment. Lissa was disappointed and somewhat disturbed, especially by his persistent stereotypic behaviours. She'd been hoping that in restoring his memories that she might also ease his restlessness and sleep disorders, but it seemed now that they might be connected with the tampering in his aggression center. Or his mind simply hadn't healed enough yet—it was hard to say. The Neimoidian Captain had no words of encouragement for her either. According to him, Grievous had been positively vicious as of late, treating them all as though they were nothing more than something he'd like to scrape off the underside of his foot.

Grievous was absorbed enough by his latest round of fighting that he went in for his next scheduled bacta treatment a few days late. Then he struck—for him—a gold mine. Grievous was ordered to take the Krahnzof system, a collection of planets and moons which, even though located in a sparsely settled area of the Mid Rim and supportive of only a few modest clusters of immigrant civilization, already lay far too close to the important trade route worlds Moorja and Yag'Dhul for comfort. The Republicans were rightfully afraid that the Separatists meant to use the system as a major staging area and for the first time sent troops enough to defeat the bloodthirsty droid leader—or so they thought. They still had no true understanding of their opponent's boundless determination or the depths of sacrifice and depravity Grievous would stoop to in order to gain his victories.

The campaign raged on for over a week, above and on all the major worlds simultaneously, testing Grievous's strategy severely. He was outnumbered, yet knew how to compensate by shifting his forces at a moment's notice and taking advantage of every one of his enemy's weaknesses and errors to whittle them down. His droid enhancements gave him the ability to receive, process and act on a vast amount of battlefield intelligence far faster than could a merely organic commander, and his droid soldiers, machines and vessels could receive and respond to his direct orders as instantaneously as though they were extensions of his own body. Grievous was quite literally built to multi-task. He could monitor both the big picture and individual engagements almost simultaneously and adapt his tactics to reinforce one another, and this plus the savings in time his superior communications often afforded him meant that his Separatist forces consistently outmanoeuvred their opponents in battle.

It took its toll, and Grievous didn't stay outnumbered for long. Towards the end of the fighting, when the Republicans, who'd been so sure of victory, began pulling out in defeat and dismay, he even found opportunities to indulge his personal feud. After one skirmish in space, his warships managed to isolate the enemy command ship, and when Grievous boarded he found three Jedi on the bridge. He killed them all during the course of a heated, thrilling duel. On the most heavily populated planet, he trapped five more and again outfought them all, in pairs and as a singleton, after they scattered in a vain attempt to throw him off but which served only to afford him the added enjoyment of hunting them down. He also shot down two Jedi during dogfights, one while using his trusty old Belbullab starfighter and the other after a long chase with his new Geonosian fanblade, which proved itself wonderfully agile. The unusually large number of Jedi he found in the field confirmed for Grievous how serious the Republic had been this time in taking him on. They'd thrown their best at him and still he'd managed to drive them off with a badly bloodied nose. It was a result which devastated the leaders of the Galactic Republic and stoked the cyborg General's already considerable arrogance to insufferable new heights.

Grievous's latest personal kills boosted his total to over a hundred and he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the greatest known serial killer of Jedi in the entire history of the Order. On Coruscant, for the first time, the Jedi Council held a special meeting to discuss the threat he posed, not as a military foe, but to their Order directly. Unfortunately, no one knew quite what to do about him. It was against Jedi principles to set their own personal safety above that of the people they served. They could only hope to destroy or capture their nemesis in battle, and with more and more Jedi being sent out to act as generals for the war effort, that possibility seemed ever more likely.

The subject of their apprehension and concern had, in the meantime, taken station with his fleet above the Krahnzof system's prime planet and was maintaining a watchful eye as Separatist civilian factions began moving in. The newly captured holdings were to be jointly governed by the Techno Union, Intergalactic Banking Clan and Commerce Guild. Grievous thought their merger would have as much chance of progressing peacefully as he would have befriending a Jedi but—whatever. Most of the arriving convoys brought in supplies and even replacement warships for him, and Grievous used his brief interlude of guard duty to authorize minor repairs as well. He also found time for himself and called his physician in to administer his latest routine bacta treatment and check-up. As always nowadays, he became docile and compliant under her soft, kind hands. He was starting to think of his sessions with the woman as peaceful respites as well as just necessary maintenance.

Lissa was very, very careful this time to not do anything that would arouse the least suspicion and forewent any attempt at conversation beyond what was strictly required. As she expected, her scans of his brain revealed that his latest excisions had healed beautifully. She swiftly removed the last four nodules in his memory center with confidence and relief, then finished up with a couple of extra-thorough examinations and treatments. Her mood grew thoughtful when she worked on what remained of his true face and looked down at his closed, obliquely set eyes. The next time she saw Grievous like this, he might well be a different person.

The parts of the Galaxy that were at war held its breath, waiting to see what General Grievous would do next. Lissa Veleroko held her breath too. She was waiting for him to recover his memories and change.

TBC


	14. A Veil, Parted

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 14 – A Veil, Parted

The second year of the Clone Wars began with escalating levels of bloodshed on both sides. The Galactic Republic, which had existed for so long without maintaining any sort of major organized military body, was finally starting to learn how to best utilize its new Grand Army and associated forces. Most members of the Jedi Order had also come to terms with their new role as military leaders, despite the very real personal grief it caused many of them, and were learning to become more able commanders in the field, with much of their new knowledge coming from bitter experience. For the first time during the conflict, the Republic began scoring some real victories. They beat back a determined Separatist attempt to free the Muuns' homeworld, Muunilinst, and on nearby Bitvitaris, clone troopers led by a Jedi general named Acheta Dome defeated a droid army augmented by a unit of Melanoplian sepsis tanks, horrendously destructive machines widely held to be, until that time, unstoppable. Brentaal IV was retaken, and the twin worlds, Ete and Setera, were successfully defended against simultaneous assaults. Even General Grievous, whose normal theatre of operations did not encompass the space about those far-away worlds, suffered a rare defeat during a ground battle, which made him wild, although he was able to enact a partial revenge by killing two of the Jedi commanders involved and savagely maiming a third. It was warfare on a scale never seen before, one never even imagined. There was soon not a sector in the entire galaxy left wholly untouched by the fighting and its myriad repercussions.

One of the few people who managed to remain quite oblivious to said repercussions and the fighting itself, was Lissa. She was too involved in her own private war, the one she'd launched against the Separatists via the mind of their Supreme Commander, and as the days after her supposed triumph passed into weeks with not a single change in Grievous's behaviour yet evident, she became ever more alarmed and then quite frantic. Eventually, she got anxious enough to break her self-imposed rule of never trying to inanely chit-chat with the General and twice tried to entice him into speaking about his youth by uttering lame, painfully obvious, personal remarks about her own past during their maintenance sessions. The first time, Grievous simply ignored her. After the second, he shot back a glare of such intense irritation that it permanently axed any such future attempts on her part. Not knowing whether he'd even recovered fully at all was the worst part. She sometimes thought about getting him into the infirmary for an electroencephalogram, to try and determine whether the neurons in the damaged area were even firing normally again, but couldn't think of a single plausible excuse to do so. There was also the opposite-end possibility that the cyborg had in fact already regained everything and accepted the slow return of his memories as just a natural part of his healing—having his memories back just didn't make any difference in him. Lissa hated the thought of Grievous being nothing more than exactly what he appeared to be, just a vicious, canny, ill-tempered brute with a thin veneer of civilization about him. She would rather that her efforts had failed utterly than find out that she'd be stuck serving a man like that throughout the duration of the war and possibly beyond.

To keep herself stable during this trying period, she emulated her Geonosian friends and tried to remain focused on her work and pay as little attention as possible to the disturbing bigger picture. Work was always absorbing. Exploring her professional interests and fulfilling her obligations never failed to bring her much-needed enjoyment and satisfaction and could keep almost any unpleasantness at bay, if only she concentrated hard enough. One of her latest projects that had best kept her interest even involved Grievous—again. Mindful of his still considerable distaste for needing to use the bacta tanks, she'd been trying to come up with a procedure that would bypass the need for full immersion and finally devised something that she thought might do just the trick. She ran it past her colleagues and boss, got Nagas's go-ahead, and the General was soon served with a memo requesting his presence in the Geonosians' biodroid and heuristics science lab at his earliest convenience.

Grievous reported in promptly, for once sincerely curious about why he was being called over to the tender at all—it'd been a long time since he'd needed work of a sort that couldn't be handled by his physician or the battle shop team and the memorandum hadn't specified much. Nagas and Lissa together took charge of him and explained that they'd devised a possibly better and faster new way of exchanging his chest fluids which wouldn't involve bacta immersions at all, and asked his permission to try out the new procedure on him experimentally. Grievous frankly stopped listening after the mention of not needing to enter a bacta tank anymore. He'd never divulged to anyone how much he truly hated using the things, how entering them never failed to trigger memories of how he'd first regained consciousness in a bacta tank after his accident, utterly disoriented and in agony, and anything that could spare him having to experience more of the same was fine by him. The two scientists accepted his consent happily and led him on down to the tender's infirmary, to give the new procedure a shot.

What the pair had in mind, he found out once in the medical bay, was to hook him up to a couple of external tanks and drain his chest cavity of the old bacta while simultaneously running in the fresh fluids. Their concern revolved about the problem of the two batches mixing, rendering the whole effort somewhat pointless thereby, and their tentative solution was to try making use of basic physics and heating the new bacta up several degrees above that of the old before pumping it in through his chest's uppermost entry port. Temporarily raising Grievous's body temperature so dramatically might have adverse effects on him…it might not. The only way to find out was to actually do an exchange, and if anything went wrong, they could just abort the attempt and quickly pop him into the infirmary tank before any lasting damage was done. Grievous eyed the infirmary bacta tank in question and inwardly shuddered. He'd already had enough of it back when the Geonosians were still caring for him. He liked the look of these new, much smaller, impossible-to-enter tanks much better, just a couple of fuel containers which Lissa had adapted and stacked one on top of the other on a big industrial cart.

Grievous acknowledged the scientists' reservations and sat down in a chair as directed and watched with unusual interest as the two got set. He'd often tried to distance himself from anything done to his physical self aboard the tender in the past, but it was different with his physician present, and this was, in any case, just something related to his maintenance, not an actual unpleasant alteration of any sort. When Nagas pulled the cart up beside him, he couldn't help noticing that the Patriot was holding his head in an oddly tilted way. He presumed that the Geonosian must've injured his neck, perhaps because another droid prototype had gone berserk on him during testing, until he saw that he was only kinking up and tucking his chin whenever Lissa was right up beside him, after which he recognized the action as some sort of male display. Grievous was surprised and a little amused. From his time on Geonosis, he'd gotten the impression that male Geonosians couldn't even function as such unless they had a snootful of the appropriate pheromones. The Patriot evidently liked the way his colleague smelled today—perhaps the woman was coming into heat or something, Grievous thought. Not that he would ever know anything about that. The General's sense of smell had always been poor, even when he'd been fully organic, and now that he was a cyborg, it was nonexistent.

The two civilians kept working right through all the neck-twisting and soon had Grievous hooked up and the two main top and bottom ports on the front of his chest ready to open. Nagas worked the valves and controls on the equipment and Lissa stood by the General's shoulder with a scanner padd, monitoring his vitals. They got the exchange going and both turned to their patient at once, eager to see what would happen to him.

Grievous felt very little out of the ordinary at first until the fresh heated bacta fluid reached and surrounded his heart, then his eyes suddenly widened and his sensor panels tipped forward. Lissa slipped a hand in under one of his chest plates to check for herself what her readings were already telling her, that his heartbeat rate had suddenly shot up into a range that was actually more normal for a Kaleesh male in his age group. Fast or not, the thudding of the organ remained safely strong and rhythmic, and when she reached a little lower down on his artificial chest wall, she found to her surprise that she could easily feel the temperature change going on within. Just as she'd hoped, the warmer fresh bacta was barely mixing with the older bacta at all, just riding overtop of it as it drained away beneath, and the two fluid layers were remaining quite distinguishable right through the synthskin.

"Doing all right, sir?" she asked. "You're not feeling uncomfortable or woozy, anything like that?"

"No, I just feel very warm. Feverish."

"I'm not surprised to hear that. The new fluid's exactly three degrees warmer than your usual body temperature. It should be safe for a Kaleesh adult to run a fever that high for short periods, am I right?"

"Yes…that's all right." He sat silent for a moment, absorbing the sensations. If he were still fully organic, all the thinner-skinned parts of his body—his inner thighs, belly, groin, throat, even the backs of his stifle joints and insides of his wrists and elbows—would be furiously radiating heat by now, he thought. He'd be panting and his lips and tongue flushed a bright mulberry-red. Maybe somebody would be yelling at him that he'd had enough, to quit baking out there and come in before—

Grievous corrected himself. "No, it feels like…sun-bathing. Pleasant, almost."

Lissa cocked her head. "Really?" she said softly. She consulted her padd, smiling a little. "A bonus, then. Your readings are fine."

More than his vitals were satisfactory throughout the procedure. When it was finished and Nagas drew off a little of the new fluid now circulating within the cyborg's chest, it tested more than ninety-nine percent free of waste toxins, a better level than what they'd ever gotten from sticking Grievous in a bacta tank. The exchange had been almost perfect, despite the ridiculously low-tech approach.

"Excellent, just excellent," Nagas proclaimed, perusing the test results and Grievous's readings at the same time. "What's even better is that we'll only have to filter out the contaminants from the bacta that was actually used, not decontaminate a whole bacta tank anymore." Like most Geonosians, the Patriot was more enthused over the savings in resources and salvage possibilities than in what any new procedure or technology could actually do for a person. "And you say you are feeling well, General?" he tossed in, almost as an afterthought.

"Yes. The sensation of being over-heated is already fading. And my heart rate is down again, I believe." He glanced up at Lissa as he said this and she nodded in the affirmative—she'd been using her hand again to monitor him while Nagas was looking at her padd. The Geonosian drew his chin in (and threw in another flirtatious little head-tilt aimed at Lissa while he was at it) and managed to adopt a very self-satisfied expression.

"Then if you prefer this, General, I see no reason not to approve this new procedure. I'll leave it up to my colleague—your physician—as to how to best integrate it into your routine care schedule. The only slight reservation I still have is…your eyes. This new procedure does nothing for your eyes."

"Yes, I was concerned about that too," Lissa said. "I don't think the preventative treatments I'm using right now are going to properly replace the beneficial effects of bacta immersion, especially for the facial margins."

"Maybe we should keep to the old routine once a month?" Nagas suggested. "Try the new exchange and then the next time the usual immersion treatment?"

"That might work. And if the results are still good, I could try two exchanges and then an immersion."

Grievous, who'd been following their conversation with growing alarm and who did not want to undergo any immersions ever again, suddenly exclaimed, "Why can't you just bathe my eyes with bacta? Or have me wear goggles or wet pads?"

Lissa and Nagas gawked at him with that abashed astonishment intelligent people sometimes feel when they realize that they've missed something obvious right under their noses. Now that it'd been said, they grasped the possibilities at once and Lissa ran off to gather up a collection of different sizes and types of safety goggles from the ship's stores. Most of them were constructed to cling tightly to the face and guard against fumes as well as debris, and it was just a matter of time and trying on different pairs to find a set that fit Grievous and could hold a small batch of bacta fluid over his eyes, like water goggles, except in reverse.

They found a pair that might work and Nagas quickly drilled a small hole into the rim at the top, and they tried it with just a little bit of water dropped in at first, to check if the seal was tight. It wasn't. The water promptly ran out at the bottom and started dripping off Grievous's mask and vocabulator and all over his chest. Nagas snatched up a towel and fired it across the room at Lissa, who was standing by the cyborg and trying to use her hands to catch the spill. The Geonosian's aim was great, but the human wasn't ready. The towel hit Grievous right in the face, snagged on the upper tip of one of his sensor panels and then hung there, dangling, and between that and the goggles and his dead-pan expression, he suddenly looked so woebegone and incongruously silly that Lissa just couldn't help herself—she laughed aloud, twice, before being able to clap a hand over her mouth. Nagas laughed too, a sort of honking bray, before becoming abruptly fascinated by the control panel on their new bacta tank cart. Grievous took it all with remarkable good humour. It might have been different if he still hadn't been feeling so warm and cozy.

"Really sorry, sir," Lissa said as she detangled the towel from his head. She pulled off his inadequate goggles and blotted up the water on his chest and face. "Guess we'd better try a different pair."

"Yes, I guess we should," Grievous agreed dryly (and by that time he was dry, too).

The next set that seemed as if they might do worked perfectly. Lissa ran a little of the leftover fresh bacta fluid in to cover the cyborg's eyes, using a piece of surgical tubing poked through the hole at the top of the goggles, courtesy of Nagas and his trusty drill, then removed most of the fluid again after a few minutes by suctioning it out into a pail on the floor—primitive, yet it worked fine, and the small amount of bacta left behind was easily caught and absorbed by the towel when Lissa removed the General's goggles. She next took off his faceplate, dabbed a bit more, this time using softer and more hygienic disposable tissues, replaced his mask, and that was that. The two scientists looked at each other with satisfaction and even Grievous seemed happy, and when he left a short while later, actually nodded in curt farewell before he went out the door. Nagas at once sidled up next to the woman and patted her arm affectionately.

"You're doing a good job with him," he said to her. "He's much quieter to work on now than he used to be. But I told you that he'd listen and cooperate with you, didn't I?"

"Yes, he's gotten a lot more agreeable than I ever expected," she replied, and meant it. It was true. Somewhere along the line Grievous had stopped being horrid and difficult as both a patient and as her superior, and now just seemed damaged and different to her. She just wished she knew if her secret surgery on him had had anything to do with it, damn it!

Lissa had a few more ideas in mind about improving his care. The next time Grievous reported in at her office aboard the Invisible Hand, for a more usual session, she at once grabbed a few items she had waiting on her work table and walked up to him before he could seat himself.

"Let's go down to the medical bay for a quick wash first, sir."

Grievous stuck in his toes and looked at her doubtfully. "Are we still doing that?" he asked. Missing was the operative word and what he really wanted to know—why? Lissa put on her sweetest, most persuasive face.

"I know it's not really necessary anymore now that we're not using the bacta tank, General, but it's become such a good, routine way for me to ensure that I do a thorough and proper inspection of your externals that I was hoping you'd let me continue. And it is easier for me to spot any very small changes or damage when you're freshly clean."

She left unsaid the last part of it—besides, I know darn well you enjoy it so much that I've practically got you purring—and simply waited after that while he thought, still wearing her bland half-smile. It didn't take Grievous long to capitulate.

"All right, carry on, then," he said.

When the pair first entered the ship's infirmary, the Neimoidians on duty eyed them, but didn't leave. Lissa had been so sure she'd be able to talk Grievous into keeping to this part of his old routine that she'd already alerted the medical staff that they'd no longer have to vacate their space, just have the autopsy room cleared and available whenever the General had a maintenance session scheduled. She then went on to give the cyborg a very thorough, careful wash-down, for the first time using a bit of detergent now and then from the droid grooming kit she'd brought along to scrub clean the grimiest areas. Grievous raised no objections to this. If anything, he stood more relaxed and cooperated better than ever. And when she rubbed over one of the sensitive areas on his sides, he lifted up his head so fast and made such a funny deep rumbling sound, like a very old, seized-up gas motor trying to turn over, that it seemed impossible that he didn't realize what he was doing—yet he didn't, he continued to appear quite unaware of his responses whenever she stimulated one of those sweet spots. It still struck her as such an odd, comically droll behaviour that she'd tried to find some factual basis for it and had tentatively concluded that it must be because he still possessed the vaguely kidney-like pair of organs that would have lain beneath the spots inside a fully organic Kaleesh body. They still occupied the same relative positions within his artificial bodily cavity and Lissa supposed it was possible that touching his synthskin in just the right place was somehow being detected by these small remnants of his former self and that some mysterious triggering link had been forged by his mind and memories of happier times. Whatever the reason behind it, she still thought it an endearing quirk, albeit one tinged with wistful sadness, and witnessing it was a secret little indulgence of hers which she hoped he would never discover.

Lissa dried Grievous's body carefully once she was done cleaning and inspecting him, then offered another slight change to his routine—she wanted to try injecting a very fine spray of lubricant into his non-sealed joints and onto some of their moving surfaces to help disperse any residual moisture and guard against dust penetration. Grievous accepted her proposal instantly. Anything that bettered his ability to fight was something he much approved of, and he observed attentively, his golden eyes keen and glinting, when she lubricated his hands and wrists and then wiped them over with a shammy, speaking with enthusiasm about the good results she'd gotten from the special grade oil she was using all the while she drew his long, elegant fingers one by one through the soft leather folds. Grievous hoped she was right about the good results. He was already thinking that if he could manipulate his lightsabers even faster, he ought to be able to kill Jedi all the more easily.

As soon as the woman was done putting on his finishing touches, Grievous stepped back and uncoupled his arms and swung and stretched them to test the movement in his joints, his motions silken-smooth and more beautifully and eerily lifelike than ever. Lissa only saw the beautiful aspect. She watched the cyborg go through his abbreviated callisthenics with pleasure, happy because he seemed in such excellent working order and had taken her suggestions so well.

Doing the new bacta exchange on her own afterwards went off very well also. Grievous remained at ease now that he could undergo this vital part of his care while in her office and sitting in his familiar chair, and it was better for Lissa as well, to have all her supplies and information so readily at hand. The only disappointment from her viewpoint was that even though Grievous had been made more comfortable and seemed so satisfied, he was still disinclined to talk. Well, maybe later, she thought, inwardly sighing. There had to come a time, surely, when he'd finally let his guard down enough to start viewing her as something of a confidant as well as his physician…wouldn't he? Kaleesh were supposed to be a rather social species, and it wasn't as if he had a huge choice of other living beings to talk to…

Lissa had one last matter to address before she let him go and spoke to him about what the procedural changes in his care could mean for him personally. "It's my professional duty to inform you, sir, that you could take over doing your own bacta changes from now on, and I'd be glad to see to it that you're supplied with all the equipment and instruction to do so, should you want to do that. In fact, I'd really only need to see you once a month, for your diagnostic checks and neural examination—all the rest you could learn to do yourself. If you were a civilian client of mine, this is usually what we'd be airming for by now, that you'd eventually care for your own cybernetics as much as possible."

She paused and looked him over critically.

"On the other hand," she went on, "your design is so unique and your functioning so important that I'd much prefer you continue letting me look after everything but your everyday care. I think I'd be better qualified to spot any potential problems, given my background, and I do have a bit of history on you by now to fall back on for referral. And I…enjoy working on you, sir, I think you know that." She paused again, to take in a bit of a steadying breath. "Still, I do have to inform you that you could care more for yourself now, if you'd prefer."

Grievous met her gaze thoughtfully and weighed his two options. Greater independence and privacy versus a lessening of personal contact with the only person he knew who related to him as an individual and as a man. At one time, Grievous would have unhesitatingly chosen the former. Now, he found that he did not want to give up that contact, any of it.

"I will keep coming here," he decided.

"Oh, good," Lissa said, and if she uttered those words with an unusual, almost suspicious amount of relief, he never noticed.

The war dragged on. The Confederacy and Republic seemed to reach a sort of impasse for a time, with many battle lines remaining static. Grievous won his next two campaigns, one easily, the other after a costly struggle, but neither victory particularly rearranged the overall territorial status held by either side. The cyborg himself didn't change either, and Lissa, always surreptitiously watching him whenever she could, grew despondent and began to lose hope. She'd waited too long, she thought, or her work had been clumsy. Or the memories she'd been trying to restore had faded away beyond retrieval—memory was such a tricky thing, after all, even in a healthy mind. To add to her depression over her failure was the knowledge that Grievous now unwittingly carried her own death warrant inside his head. All it would take would be a single glitch associated with his brain implants or the Geonosians deciding to upgrade them, and they'd surely discover what she had done. It all culminated to make Lissa feel quite bitter and regretful for several days, then her logical side reasserted itself, pointed out that there was nothing she could do about it anyway, and she regained her usual positive outlook and went back to trying to make the most of things. Even if Grievous was still vicious, at least he rarely directed it her way anymore.

Two months into the second year of the Clone Wars, Grievous was tasked to take a world named Quispamsis. It was meant to be another conquest for strategic purposes and he was asked to leave the world as undamaged as possible. The Republic decided to make it difficult for him. They sent several brigades and a battle fleet to shore up the natives' own efficient, though low-tech military, and the fight was on.

Grievous again led the ground assault on the planet's primary governing city. The Quispamsisians had incorporated a great deal of greenbelt area into their municipal planning and the battle became spread out and expansive as a result. Troopers and droids alike often raced across manicured lawns as they sought to engage and destroy one another, and artillery pieces were stationed on sports fields. More mobile weaponry—gunships, hailfire and vulture droids, missile sleds—took control and delivered appalling payloads, often targeting clusters of enemy soldiers or droids. Isolated districts within the sprawling metropolis caught fire and exploded into ferocious firestorms. The leaden sky was laced with great arcs and plumes of smoke that seemed tethered to the low overcast. For hours the fighting raged on with little pattern or apparent direction to it, then the war machines and surviving men and droids began gradually converging on a vast ravaged exhibition park on the outskirts of the city.

Both sides now concentrated their firepower there. It would be their collective stand, the last one. General Grievous, who'd been directing the battle from a heavily armed and reinforced ops shuttle and sometimes dashing off on brief sorties to fight hand-to-hand whenever it was parked, switched over to using his customized wheel bike, a hoop-like personal ground vehicle ideally suited to speed him around a battlefield. Its wickedly clawed, twinned wheels could grab and roll over any flat surface and its retractable legs clamber the machine over any obstacle. A powerful double laser cannon occupied the space where a second seat had been, but Grievous rarely used it—he was far more inclined to use the bike itself to run down and crush any living foes. He left his MagnaGuard elite with the shuttle, fired up his new command vehicle, and charged off, wild with excitement and his lust to kill.

One of the people he sped blindly past in his hurry to reach the bloodiest fighting was his physician. Lissa and her bodyguards had been having a terrible time trying to keep up with Grievous. Several times, Sunny had commandeered the next available conveyance that could carry her and four battle droids and ordered it to take them wherever Grievous's shuttle had suddenly leapfrogged. They'd no sooner arrive than he'd be off again, repositioning his ship, and they'd been playing catch-up like that all through the long afternoon, an exhausting, deadly game to be trying to play in the midst of fierce combat. Lissa frankly thought it luck that they were all still intact. Shells had already landed near enough to rattle her bones twice, an enemy gunship had overflown them not ten meters away, and, most dismaying of all, a clone sniper had targeted and shot at them, and it was only thanks to Sunny's own keen aim and quick responses that the man hadn't done any real damage before being killed. Seeing her guards in action had both shaken and sobered Lissa. Sunny had expertly directed his fire at the junction of the clone's helmet and body armour, one of the few tiny areas left unprotected. She couldn't help wondering who'd programmed such lethal information into the droid's synthetic mind.

They'd hitched rides twice since then and now here was Grievous rushing off again, now completely impossible to keep up with. Even Sunny was stymied, but then he informed her that the General's shuttle was staying put and that his chief MagnaGuard had said that they should come in—the battle shouldn't last too much longer. Lissa followed her droids with a quicker step. The craziness all around them couldn't end soon enough for her.

A shell burst directly in front of them, close enough for them to feel its shockwave through the air. Another exploded off to their left, then two more. Sunny, leading, stopped so fast that Lissa ran into him. His long conical head swept back and forth, evaluating data.

"What's wrong?" Lissa asked. The other droids shifted, bracketing her, closing in to protect her. "What's going on?" she exclaimed more loudly, becoming frightened by their sudden actions.

"We're being overrun," Sunny replied, then started to run. Lissa didn't need any encouragement to join him. She stretched out and pounded along as fast as she could right behind him. The footing was bad, soft ground already chewed up by many passing feet and deep tire treads, hunks of earth, pieces of metal. They skirted a deep crater. She had no idea of where she was going. All she focused on was following Sunny.

A roaring hot gust abruptly knocked her down. She hit the ground hard and tumbled over and over. For long seconds she lay stunned, sprawled out now that she'd come to rest, until terror gripped her and drove her back up on her feet. Still a little dazed, she took several steps. Her legs worked fine—she was unhurt! A nearby structure, maybe a maintenance shed or a garage, caught her eye. She made a run for it, oblivious to everything except the promise of shelter.

A monstrous metal juggernaut streaked past right in front of her face, something tumbling, spinning. Lissa skidded to a halt and dropped down without thinking. Duck and cover, Sunny had taught her—what a joke. She peeked fearfully out from beneath her arms, which she'd clasped over her head. But that wasn't the enemy, it was Grievous! And he'd seen her. He was coming back! She jumped up just as the General finished whipping his machine around in a tight about-turn, steering it to stop sideways to her.

"Where are your guards?" he shouted at her.

"I don't know! We got separated."

Another shell exploded, its blast thundering over them. The woman flinched and shrank up next to the wheel bike.

"You can't stay here. Get on," Grievous ordered.

The cyborg was already sitting in the only available seat she could see. "Where?" she cried, almost hopping from foot to foot in her anxiety. Grievous growled and showed her where, by reaching to grab a handful of her jumpsuit above her waist and yanking her up and down face-first across his lap before roaring off.

Lissa, disoriented and unable to see a thing except the close-up edge of a metal seat and control console, banged her nose and the top of her head as the bike sped up and began bouncing hard. She clawed wildly for a handhold, but Grievous had an arm clamped over her back—all she could do was twist around, onto her side, and try to pull in her legs, which were being bashed and pelted with thrown-up debris. Grievous yelled at her.

"Stay still! Don't interfere with me!"

"I'm t-trying!"

They hit another enormous bump and the bike went briefly airborne and crashed back down, and Lissa's stomach lurched right along with it in nauseous harmony. She finally found something to grip, the cyborg's own body armour, and pulled herself up until she was plastered against his chest and could peer back over his shoulder. The wheel bike was throwing up a huge rooster tail of dirt, obscuring much of her rearward view. Barely glimpsed droids, machinery, rubble and fiery blasts whipped past on either side in a dizzying melange. Lissa clung tight for dear life, averting her face so the sensor panel attached to the side of Grievous's skull wouldn't smack her when he turned his head. She'd never been on a faster, scarier machine, not one that was ground-based, and the General was a terrible driver, reckless and speed-crazed and utterly unwilling to avoid rough ground.

The wheel bike churned and bounded up a steep slope and Grievous throttled back and pulled the machine into a sudden sideways skid. Lissa went flying—she was never sure afterwards if he'd flung her off or if she'd just fallen—and reacquainted herself with the ground with an undignified thud. She also banged her nose again, this time on something metal, dark, and upright. It was the leg of a super battle droid.

"You four! Keep her safe! The rest of you, follow me!" she heard Grievous bawl hoarsely, then came the sound of the wheel bike revving back up and multiple loud droid whirs and clanks. She rolled over just in time to watch droves of the big black battle droids, strung out on either side of her, fire up into full fighting mode and begin charging past her. Grievous led, accelerating back down the slope to rejoin the battle below.

Lissa regained her wind and jumped to her feet. And promptly yelped with pain and flailed about, which drew the four battle droids Grievous had ordered to guard her in close to provide sturdy support. The woman leaned against one of them as she bent to examine herself. Her pant leg was torn over one shin and she could see blood. Something, a sharp rock, perhaps even a little shrapnel, had cut through the tough cloth and given her a nasty gash during her wild ride. Her first battlefield injury… Thanks, Grievous, Lissa thought sourly.

She sat on the dirt and tied a quick temporary bandage over the wound while at the same time trying to watch the fighting. From her new vantage point, she could see the whole battlefield. The slope below her looked groomed. She could envision kids sledding on it in the winter, skiers zooming down, other recreational sports, and all of it about to come to an end for the Quispamsisians because it looked even to her untrained eye as if they were losing. There were just too many droids and not enough men. Grievous had brought in and stashed away far too many reserves besides the super battle droids up on the hillside and he'd ordered every last single one of them into the fray. Several great waves of clone troopers and native soldiers had indeed pushed forward, taking the ground they'd bombarded just minutes ago, but opposing them was a huge swell of battle droids, pushing back. The two moving masses of individuals began to coalesce all along their forward edges, sometimes merging, something clumping into little struggling knots. The gunships and flying droids still hovered above it all, deadly dragonflies attending a clash of warring social insects.

Lissa spotted a strange line briefly parting the ranks of troopers—it was Grievous, using his wheel bike to cut a killing swathe right through the men. He raced towards the rear of one of the Republican waves and partway there stopped his bike and leapt off, his figure distinguishable at that distance only because of the broken white dots of his armour plating. Two bars of light ignited beside him, brilliant under the dull overcast, then two more flared—he'd activated his lightsabers. Lissa, excited, heaved herself to her feet. She saw two more of the long lights spark to life, a third, and was just able to make out their owners in their subdued, earth-toned clothing. Jedi! So that was what had enticed the cyborg into the midst of his enemies! The bright beams all came together and began whirling, jerking, fitfully arcing. She could have been looking through an old-fashioned kaleidoscope, the lights were weaving through such intricate patterns. But it didn't last. One by one, three of the lightsabers extinguished. Grievous had killed the people wielding them. He turned next on the soldiers all around him and his own lightsabers began whirling again. Little bolts of blaster fire rained towards him, the men trying to stop him, but it didn't make a wit of difference. There wasn't a hand-portable weapon made that could penetrate the General's duranium armour.

Lissa clutched at one of the super battle droid's arms as she watched Grievous lunge and slash and cut through anyone that got in his way, leaving carnage behind. She'd never seen him really fight before, and it was horrifying, terrifying, and exhilarating to behold, at least from afar. He swiftly broke through to where his own troops were already fighting hand-to-hand and his strokes slowed and became more sporadic—he was running out of targets. Quispamsisians and clone troopers were going down all over the battlefield. They were becoming engulfed, their numbers dwindling, and even the air machines had stopped tearing at one another because there were only Separatist vessels and droids left in the sky. This part of it Lissa didn't want to watch anymore. She knew that Grievous didn't believe in taking prisoners and that his battle droids had standing orders to slaughter any clone troopers on the spot, even if they surrendered. Native soldiers he sometimes kept captive long enough to turn back over to their leaders, and sometimes not. It all depended on how fast their governments gave up and kowtowed to his demands.

Super battle droids weren't provided with much interactive programming and it took Lissa a good long while to make her quartet understand that it was her duty to remain close to General Grievous and that they could guard her just as easily on the fields below, now that the fighting was winding down. They finally consented to march down with her, and just in time too. The cloud ceiling began lowering rapidly even as they descended and it started to sprinkle. Lissa walked faster, ignoring her stinging shin. She'd had just about enough abuse for one day without adding a soaking on top of it.

By the time they got down to level ground, the battle was all but over. One of the super battle droids made contact with the MagnaGuards and was ordered to bring Lissa in post-haste on top of her own request—it made the rather dim machines shift into high gear at last and start hustling. The ops shuttle had moved again and it was a long walk, especially for someone with a painful, gimpy leg. Lissa was immensely relieved when she finally spotted the shuttle as well as the General's wheel bike just up ahead and surprised to find the two vehicles parked next to a large tent. The Quispamsisian military had apparently been using the portable structure as a field headquarters, and a troop of battle droids had captured it virtually intact. Grievous and his elite and some of his battle droid officers had already moved inside and the officers were going through some of the abandoned paperwork and equipment. Lissa was only interested in the abandoned furniture. She found an empty chair next to one of the center tables and sank down onto it with a groan.

Grievous had looked her over when she'd first entered, but said nothing to her. He was still too busy running his campaign and moved frequently, from the tent over to the shuttle and then back again. Lissa asked one of the droid officers for an update and he informed her that the city had been pretty much won but that they were still waiting on a space battle to resolve itself. The natives were being stubborn about surrendering. They weren't willing to give up until their very last hope was blown up, something that the fleet above was engaged in doing with alacrity. Lissa languished into a weary stupor. She was very tired, she was beginning to ache, and she was starting to mourn the loss of her own faithful bodyguards, especially Sunny.

The wind picked up and it began to rain in earnest. The big drops pelted over the canvas roof like a spray of flung stones. It sounded as if some serious weather was moving in. Lissa revived somewhat and set some of her medical kit out on the table. She zipped open the bottom of her ripped pant leg and had a closer look at her injury. Just a shallow flesh wound, thank goodness, and she already knew from her hike down off the hillside that she hadn't done herself any serious damage anywhere, although she suspected that she was going to have a nice collection of bruises. She cleaned and treated the wound, wrapped it up again, gave herself a dose of analgesics, and then forced herself to munch on some of her rations and drink some water. Nobody had said anything to her about going off duty and it seemed as if she might be standing by in the tent for some time yet.

Lissa's eyelids started drooping a little. The hard driven patter of the rain was strangely soothing. It was something she hardly ever heard anymore, the sounds of nature. Grievous came back in from being over in the shuttle, glanced at her, executed a weird little shudder as if trying to shake off the raindrops that had fallen on him, then took up station right in the entranceway and stared out. Six of his MagnaGuards were standing about the interior of the tent, patiently waiting. The battle droid officers picked over their captured materials for possible useful intelligence. It was easy to forget later how peaceful it had been beforehand, with no warnings and no hint of foreboding.

Grievous said, "The Huk won't like this weather. It might be worth delaying our attack, just to give them more time to get cold and stiffen up."

Lissa raised her head to stare at him. What had he just said?

Another strong gust rattled the tent and slapped at the entrance flaps. Lissa saw Grievous hunch and lower his head into the brief scattering of rain that blew in past him. And then—

For long seconds he stood stock still, his face tilted downward, as if studying his own feet. Slowly, very slowly, he lifted his hands before him and looked at those too, inspecting them with weird self-absorption. He straightened back up while he examined each slender, duranium-coated finger and his armoured palms. Again he stood frozen, looking outside. Then he stepped back, once, twice, and uttered a long moaning wail.

Lissa felt the hair rise up on the back of her neck and arms. It was a terrible sound, a despairing howl, an affirmation of something dying. She could hardly believe it had just come from Grievous. He spun and began gawking about, wildly, looking over everything within the tent as though seeing it all for the first time, seeming shocked and stupefied—staring at his droids, the tables and chairs, the equipment, the canvas walls themselves…his physician… And just like that, he knew. As soon as his gaze fell on her, he knew.

"What did you do to me?" Grievous whispered.

The tone of it chilled her. "General, I—"

"What did you DO to me!" he shrieked, and for her that was the worst, to hear his voice suddenly elevate into a high-pitched scream that was utterly unlike him—Grievous yelled and shouted, but he never screamed, not like this! She got shakily up on her feet and Grievous took a lunging stride towards her before pulling himself up short and glaring at his nearest MagnaGuard.

"Out!" he ordered. "Get out, all of you, outside and wait there. Now!"

All the droids did as commanded, filing obediently out into the rain to take up positions next to the tent. As soon as the last machine exited, Grievous resumed his stalking advance.

Lissa expected him to strike her and actually shut her eyes as he stormed up, but all he did was grab her clothing beneath the collar of her jumpsuit and swing her up to stand on her chair, so that he could more easily get his head close to her own. He kept hold and gave her a violent shake and snarled right into her face, "Tell me what you did. All of it! Tell me!"

The poor woman, quite terrified, could barely speak at first. "I—I took out—blocks. Scars."

"Scars? What scars? What are you talking about?"

"In your brain. There was damage. I've been taking it out—"

"Damage?" His expression abruptly altered, from rage into something stricken. He looked the way he might have had he turned to her in trust with his mask off, unprotected, and she'd whipped him across the face. "You mean, damage from the accident? I have brain damage?" he cried, appalled.

"Not from the accident, no, sir," she said miserably. "This was something deliberate, done to block your memories. Little scars. I removed them." Her voice lowered. She came near to moaning herself at what she was inflicting on him. "You have other blocks, too, elsewhere. I wasn't supposed to ever tell you or let you see…"

Grievous let her go. His hands hovered before his own face. He began reaching for his head, to touch his skull. Then his anger returned and he erupted in fury.

Lissa, still standing on her chair, was the only thing left untouched and undamaged, as if in a calm eye as he rampaged around her, roaring out vile oaths and smashing furniture and equipment with his fists. It was the first time she'd seen him lose all control of himself and it was all the more horrid because she knew her meddling was the cause of it. Somewhere within his mind a final relay had switched over and freed his memories at last, and with it had come sudden full awareness of his self and of his situation. His tantrum was all the evidence she needed to know that he didn't like it one bit.

He wound down and stood panting, breath coming hard and raggedly. "Go…" he murmured to himself. "Have to…" And with that, he whirled and bolted out through the doorway.

Lissa jumped down off her chair and ran out after him. The MagnaGuards had gone on alert. They stepped towards her, electrostaffs up, aggressive and confused. "It's all right!" she assured them. "The General's fine. He just needs to be alone for a while. He'll be back soon." The droids subsided. Lissa lifted her head and shielded her eyes with her hands, trying to see through the lowering gloom and precip. She thought she caught one glimpse of Grievous, just a flash of broken white already far away, bobbing amidst the rubble skirting a damaged building, then it vanished.

Dejected, Lissa went back inside the tent to keep dry. The droids, rather surprisingly, followed and turned to her for orders in the absence of their master and she put them to work cleaning up the mess. She watched them morosely while she waited for Grievous to return, waited for him to finish racing through the rain and the wind and the conquered city and trying to out-run his devastating discovery.

TBC


	15. The General Checks In

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 15 – The General Checks In

General Grievous did come back that evening after his wild bolt out into the storm, and much sooner than Lissa really expected. He was a good soldier, after all. He knew his duties and he would fulfill them despite having just experienced one of the greatest emotional blows in his life. The only acknowledgement he would spare his physician as he came back into the tent headquarters which his droids had just finished setting up into order again was a single withering glare, and after that he turned back to the business of warfare and ignored her. Lissa retreated into a corner and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. She supposed she couldn't blame Grievous for being so angry with her. He was still outraged by her deception and betrayal of his tentative trust, and probably wouldn't start appreciating what she'd done for him until he fully calmed down and got his latest campaign over and done with…she hoped.

Night had fallen while the General had been away and the battle droids had brought over some portable lights. They cast harsh shadows and made Grievous look frightening and more skeletal than ever, and even Lissa, who was usually oblivious to the deliberately fear-provoking aspects of his design, found him scary to look at as he stalked in and out of the pools of illumination whenever he was in the tent. Apart from that one initial glare, he continued to ignore her. Whatever had woken in his mind, it was something he'd apparently wrestled into submission again and could set aside for the time being, and the woman found that encouraging, that she hadn't messed up his logical thinking so badly that he couldn't prioritize anymore. She was also encouraged by his not having arrested or just plain killed her yet. Grievous wanted more information, no doubt, and was willing to wait for the rest of it. It gave her at least a little more time to prepare herself.

Lissa tried to review and organize all the most pertinent points Grievous would want to know about in her mind, but her own thinking had grown so muddled that she couldn't concentrate and gave it up. The winds outside had eased and the showers steadied into a monotonous heavy downpour. It had also gotten noticeably warmer, the temperature rising to almost tropical levels, and between that and the constant sonorous drone of the rain and her weariness, the woman was soon nodding off again in spite of her precarious situation. She finally broke down and appropriated a couple of small tarps that had been left dumped in the tent and made herself a makeshift bed on the ground in her corner. Even thought she was still on standby (as far as she knew), she'd always been allowed to see to her organic needs. One of the MagnaGuards would wake her if she was really needed, or maybe Grievous himself would leap at the opportunity to rouse her with a swift kick to her head.

She slept badly. No matter how she positioned herself, she couldn't get comfortable. Sometimes she thought she heard the cyborg's voice raised and shouting and would come half out of her drowse, then it would fade and she'd sink back down. Later, an embedded thunderstorm drifted by high overhead, generating flashes of light so bright that they flared red right through her closed eyelids and she stirred and tossed and fuzzily wondered whether they were being bombarded again. The heat and humidity combined with her body's feverish aching and she started to sweat. She soon felt as sodden, lying there, as she felt sickly and throbbing.

Someone began tucking a wadded-up section of blanket beneath her head to serve as a pillow. It was so much nicer and softer than the scratchy harsh canvas of the tarps. Lissa opened her eyes and saw the end of a conical droid head hovering just above her face. "Trigger?" she queried, blinking sleepily.

"No, ma'am."

"Sunny!" She pushed herself up into a sitting position, instantly energized and alert. It was her battle droid all right, funny long down-face and yellow-patched body and all—what luck! For the first time since setting down on Quispamsis, she felt like smiling. "Where are the others?" she added, looking past him.

"TN4296454 is aboard Invisible Hand having his arms replaced. The other two were destroyed."

Lissa regarded the droid officer more sadly. Not that she'd ever been able to even tell her other three bodyguards apart, but…still. They'd served her loyally and had always tried to do as well as their limited programming allowed. It was more than what some living people were able to manage. A more urgent matter occurred to her and she asked, "Where is General Grievous?"

"In the city center, accepting the Quispamsisian government's surrender. His chief MagnaGuard informed me that you are free to stand down and return to the tender."

"Oh, shoot! When exactly did the General leave to do that, do you know?"

"He left forty-seven minutes ago."

"Okay, good. Get me some transport back to the flagship as fast as you can, Sunny. I have to go up to my office right away. And I need a favour from you before you go off duty yourself."

"Of course, ma'am, whatever you wish."

Sunny helped her up and Lissa staggered around for a few minutes, walking off her stiffness while they waited for transportation. It was still several hours before dawn by planetary-time, and already seven hundred hours, fleet-time. Broken sleep or not, she'd managed to rest much of the night and felt better for it. There was no question of her actually returning to the tender yet, of course. She was one hundred percent certain that Grievous would come looking for her the instant he'd finished with the Quispamsisians.

Once back aboard the Invisible Hand, Lissa asked Sunny to continue monitoring General Grievous's whereabouts and to contact her as soon as the cyborg returned to his flagship. She then cleaned herself up and made herself as presentable as she could, forced herself to eat a quick hot morning meal in the mess even though she was starting to feel quite queasy, pulled all the information and images she was going to need, and finally plopped down again, on her own comfortable office bed. No need to fear falling asleep this time—her mind, thankfully clear, was far too busy mentally organising her briefing for Grievous. Her keen awareness that she'd also be pleading for her continued right to exist and keep her position additionally helped to keep her wide awake. If Grievous didn't like what she had to say, she'd very probably be changing professions to one that involved a great deal of physical exertion and very little thought…or changing to a state that involved no thought at all.

Her personal communicator beeped. It was Sunny, warning her. The General must've already sent his reports from the planet, or intended to file them later—he stormed into Lissa's office scant minutes later, reared-up and threatening. "Show me everything," he ordered without preamble, fuming.

Lissa did. She showed him the original scans of his altered mind, the way the nodular scars had been precisely placed beneath the surface of his brain. She told him what she'd learned from the Geonosians and what the tampering had been meant to accomplish, and then showed him how she'd removed the damage done to his memory center, spaced out over three of his neural examinations. Grievous stood behind her the whole time she sat at her usual computer workstation and pulled up the requisite images and spoke. Towards the end, he placed a hand on one of her shoulders, which made her very nervous because she knew all too well how easily he could crush the bony structure of her shoulder joint with a single squeeze, but he never hurt her, just kept his hand in place, warningly. It wasn't until she showed him the last picture, the composite scan of the damage that was still left, that he exerted himself physically at all.

"So you have not removed any of the nodules from the second cluster at all?" he growled, voice rumbling unnervingly from directly behind and above her head.

"No, sir."

"Remove them now."

"I can't."

His fingers tightened, pinching her painfully. "Yes you can! You have the skill."

"No, I mean—I daren't. People would notice if you suddenly became less aggressive…don't you think?"

The pressure on her shoulder eased. After a moment, he took his hand away. "You're right," he said, his voice now sounding weary and disappointed.

Lissa kept her back turned to him and waited for his next order, for his anger to flare, for him to do anything at all. She didn't know that he was regarding her with peculiar melancholy and that the expression in his eyes in his long, masked face made him appear at that moment far more mournful than sinister. Grievous was indulging in a brief bout of rare self-pity, letting the overwhelming ramifications of Lissa's revelations wash over him instead of facing them head-on, and it left him uncommonly introspective. He stared down at the small human female whose whims had changed everything for him and found himself, for the first time, wondering what drove her decisions and sense of values or indeed, what went on in her strange alien mind at all.

"Why did you do this?" he asked at last. "What possessed you to even think of undertaking such a task?"

The million credit question… Lissa wasn't even sure anymore of how to answer. She tried, though.

"It was revenge at first, sort of," she replied. "I still resented that you'd forced me into your service, and when I saw what had been done to you, thought that undoing it might be a way of striking back at your people, the Separatists, by making you less able or inclined to want to work for them. But then I started thinking that maybe you'd been forced into their service too, and that what you did was more due to your alterations than your own personal self. After that, it just…it didn't seem right anymore, what'd they'd done to you. I was sure you hadn't agreed to it, and since you'd made me your physician by then and I was supposed to keep you healthy and this wasn't healthy, I just, well, started feeling sorry for you."

Grievous stiffened. "You—felt sorry. For me."

"Yes, sir. And when I started doing your examinations routinely and you didn't mind my scanning your brain anyway, I just…began…using the opportunity."

Grievous couldn't listen to any more. Lissa heard him abruptly stride off, muttering to himself in an unfamiliar language, presumably Kaleesh. When she turned in her seat, she saw that he'd gone to brood in front of her window. Enough starlight was shining in to dramatically highlight his white armour and emphasize the motion of his hands as he began to clench and unclench them. She watched him, feeling oddly grateful. He'd accepted everything she'd told him far better than she'd expected he would, and the sheer relief of finally having unshouldered her guilt and uncertainty and confessed her transgressions was enormous.

The big cyborg started to pace, back and forth, but his walking lacked the autonomous displacement quality of his usual bridge-pacing—it was just an expression of distress, plain and simple. Even though he so clearly did not appreciate shows of sympathy, Lissa couldn't help feeling a fresh up swell of compassion for him. She still felt responsible for him and for the obvious upset she'd caused, and her relief was rapidly giving way to new concerns for his well-being. What sort of man Grievous would turn out to be now that he'd regained all his marbles—or some of them, anyway—was still something of a mystery to her, but she did hope, quite suddenly and fervently, that he'd allow her to stick around long enough to find out.

"General? I…I want you to know that I never meant for any of this to hurt you or cause you any trauma," she said, still trying to explain herself. "I expected you to regain your memories gradually, bit by bit. I thought there was even a chance that you'd already regained them, but I couldn't tell because you're so unfr—, er, because you're…disinclined to be familiar with people. You believe me, don't you? That I never meant to hurt you?"

Grievous halted to stare at her. "If I didn't believe that, you'd already be dead."

"Ah." She swallowed, nervously. "But you're all right now, yes? Now that you do know everything? And you understand why I couldn't tell you before, tell you what I was trying to do, I mean."

The woman's transparent need to have her deceitfulness forgiven was extremely irritating to Grievous. He decided to let her squirm and simply began pacing again, without answering. Far from shutting her up, it just made her try approaching him from a different angle.

"General Grievous, if you please, could you tell me a little of what happened? Last night, down on Quispamsis, did everything just suddenly flood back for you all at once? And I saw you examine yourself beforehand. Were you surprised by your appearance, or did you know and—"

"Why are you asking me this!" Grievous interrupted. He strode with more force, almost stomping. When he whirled about to retrace his steps, the way he swung his metal haunches and long arms around warned of fresh, escalating rage. "You insisted on meddling. You got your results. What more do you need?" he snapped.

"A little more description is what I need," she persisted doggedly, ignoring his aggressive posturing. "It'd help me better understand how your mind works."

"I don't want you knowing how I think! And you are being annoying. I don't remember you being like this before. Were you always so annoying?"

"I am when it's the only way left to get the information I need."

Grievous huffed and halted again—he jammed to a stop this time. "All right!" he exclaimed. "It was—it was like waking up, what I remember of waking. Before, it was dreamlike, a lucid dream. There was the battle, I had to move you with the wheelbike, I fought the Jedi." His voice began to falter as he sought for clarity. "I can see it all, remember it all, everything I did, I just…I can't remember what I was thinking. But I must have thought. I planned all those battles. My strategies worked, I know they did. And…and what I said, I know that too. Addressing the Separatist Council…huh." He shook his head, as if to dislodge a repulsive insect that had just landed on his face. "I remember doing that, I can see it in my mind. There is just…no feeling attached, no involvement."

He paused again, to focus inward. Lissa watched carefully, noting how his expression remained sure and engrossed. He had something to access now, a full vast store of memories to sort through again instead of fractured, confusing remnants.

"Would it be similar to seeing footage of yourself?" she offered. "Maybe a record of yourself doing something you can't exactly remember doing?"

"No, I do remember it, that is the point. And it is all here, all of it available, here," he replied, tapping his own skull for emphasis. "Perhaps more like…watching someone else. You see their actions, hear their words, but you cannot know how they think and feel, not truly."

"Yes…I think I get it," Lissa mused. "It sounds almost as though what was left of your personality before represented only your surface self. Your memories from then might have been stored in a similar partial way, with nothing retained beyond the visual and auditory. I'm only guessing, though. I'm no neurologist, let alone a xenoneurologist. What about before your operation? Do you recall more from when you were fully organic?"

Grievous looked soberly at her. "I remember everything," he muttered. "Everything."

"Oh, well, good."

So—success after all. Delayed and ill-timed to be sure, but she'd accomplished what she'd hoped for nonetheless. Lissa felt the last of her misgivings drain away. She regarded the cyborg with sympathy and a certain satisfaction.

"General? Do you remember that dinner we had with Count Dooku?" she suddenly asked.

"How could I forget, even before?" Grievous growled.

"Can you recall that I asked you when you first developed an interest in flying? You began to answer me, but never quite finished."

"Yes…yes, I do remember. What I wanted to say was that a neighbour had an old swoop bike. He used to let me and my older brothers ride it, even though I was just seven and—" Abruptly, he stopped and snorted with surprise. "Why couldn't I say that before?" he went on. "It seems so clear now."

"It was blocked," Lissa said.

"Yes, I know. Still…"

He shook his head again, flicking the lower part of his face aside in irritation over his perceived inadequacies. Lissa couldn't help noticing that during the course of their conversation, he'd begun inching his way back towards her, his body subconsciously betraying his need to talk over what had occurred to him despite his pride's stubborn determination to weather his ordeal alone. She felt like calling him on it and asking him if he didn't feel a little better for having spoken with her after all, but knew he'd just get steamed and so let it go. It did help her decide he was receptive enough to address one last, rather delicate matter, however.

"General, if you're willing, there is one more thing we really ought to discuss."

"What now?" he said, shutting his eyes briefly with exaggerated deliberation before promptly stepping up behind her seat again. Lissa just swung about and brought another image up on her screen, a microscopic still this time.

"Do you know what these are, sir?" she asked.

Grievous studied the shot. "Cells."

"Yes, blood cells. Your own, to be exact."

"My cells?" he said, immediately suspicious. "When and why were you sampling my blood?"

"Er, I got this a while ago, when you were on Marku."

"Marku," Grievous echoed. His voice lowered, growing harsher as he went on. "You did it while I was unconscious. You took my blood, without permission—"

"Look, I needed it back then to run a tox screen and confirm your species ident, to better care for you. It was a legitimate need and I'm not apologizing for doing it," Lissa interjected before he could get wound up again. She hesitated a moment, then ploughed on ahead, grimly. "And since everything's out now, I guess I may as well confess that I also took a series of deep full body scans of you while you were still unconscious. They weren't necessary and I know I should have waited and asked you first, but I didn't, so—sorry. That part of it I will apologize for."

Grievous expelled his breath in a sharp, wordless exclamation, as though he still couldn't believe her gall, even after all the intervening time. "Is this what you've been hiding from me?" he demanded angrily. "In your secure files?"

"Yes."

"To—study me in secret, was that it? Like an interesting schematic?"

Lissa's cheeks reddened. "Yes, sir," she admitted.

This time, Grievous said nothing in response. He remained silent for so long that she finally risked looking back over one shoulder and up into his glowering face in a way that was almost plaintive.

"Are you—really mad?"

"I'm furious!" Grievous snapped. "Go on!"

"Oh. Um—okay, your blood. All these little circular cells here, they're all red cells, red blood cells. Do you see how most of them have these dark masses inside, the nuclei?"

"I know how a cell is structured!"

"But do you also see this very similar cell here, the one that seems to lack a nucleus?"

"Yes, and—? What is your point?"

"When I first looked at this, I didn't think there was one. I just presumed your species had a variety of red blood cell types—it's not unknown. But now that I know more about what's normal for Kaleesh, I know that you don't have that variety, or shouldn't. All your red blood cells should be of one type and nucleated. So I looked my sample results over more carefully. And I found out that that's not even a Kaleesh blood cell. It's human."

"Human? But—how—I don't understand." Grievous was not just perplexed, he was somewhat aghast. "Why is it in me?" he exclaimed.

"That's what I wanted to know," Lissa replied. She swivelled her chair about and looked up into his face again, much less timidly than before. "I had a chat with the Geonosians about it… Do you know or did you ever know a Jedi named Sifo-Dyas?"

"A Jedi? No! Why are you asking me this?"

"Because that's Sifo-Dyas's blood cell. Or it was. Apparently, you were given a transfusion of his blood during the operation to install your cybernetics. Nagas said he was simply told to do it. Can you think of any reason why anyone would order you to be transfused with alien blood, especially a Jedi's?"

Grievous could, and the realization instantly shot his ever-smouldering temper through the roof. "Dooku," he spat. "It was Dooku!"

"Really? Our Count Dooku? But that doesn't make any sense. Why would he—"

Grievous abruptly reeled backwards, away from her. He spun about, as if to march back to the window, changed his mind and whirled around again. His metal frame began shaking visibly. He gesticulated wildly and lifted one foot and slammed it back down, clutching it at the floor. "He ordered it!" Grievous cried. "He wanted to make me Force-sensitive, wants to control me! It's why he was always disappointed with me, why he wants me to be so angry!"

"Whoa— What?" Lissa exclaimed. She hadn't the slightest idea of what the man was talking about. All she did know was that whatever it was, it had so enraged Grievous that he seemed on the verge of throwing a sudden violent fit. He snatched up a foot and smashed it down again—he clawed the floor this time, the taloned ends of his toes screeching over the tiles. Lissa shrank back in her seat. She'd seen people lose it and throw some beauts before, but this was wrath of a higher order, on the scale of the tantrum he'd had down on Quispamsis, minus the broken objects and tearing around. There wasn't even any point in trying to calm him down. It seemed safer and easier to just let him vent, even if, sadly, his particular well of malice and spite was bottomless.

Her poor old floor was taking a beating, though. She'd never before seen a sentient adult actually stamp their feet in rage. It was weirdly fascinating to watch. Lissa got the impression that if he could, Grievous would be gnashing his teeth and snapping at himself.

"I will kill him for this!" the cyborg finally choked out, his voice so curdled that he was barely articulate, his hands gesturing and squeezing as though they were already wrapped about Dooku's throat.

"Sir, I…I could use some help here," Lissa interjected, trying to refocus him on the matter at hand before he lost it completely. "Why are you so sure it was Dooku who ordered the transfusion?"

"The blood! It was from a Jedi! Jedi blood!"

"Yes?"

"It had midichlorians in it! He wanted them put in me to boost my count," Grievous exclaimed. His tone turned sneering, condescending. "Don't you know? I thought you had some comprehension of physiology."

"Oh, right. Those midi-things," Lissa said. She frowned, the skin crinkling between her brows.

Grievous fixed her with a hard glare. "I suppose you don't believe in them. Or in the Force."

"Of course I do. I have to, don't I? It's just that I don't think it works quite the way you're suggesting. From my understanding, you can't just inject someone with a batch of those things and poof, make them Force-sensitive. Being able to manipulate the Force involves a natural inclination and metaphysical stuff too, and…and…" She struggled and threw a grimace in on top of her frown. "Oh, I don't know—just stuff. It's not a subject I'm real comfortable with," she admitted.

"Neither am I," said Grievous.

"Even if midichlorians were transferable, the attempt still doesn't make much sense. The blood volume in what's left of your circulatory system is so low now and your organic components so limited. I don't know where anyone thought your midichlorians were supposed to reside. And I hate to think of how many drugs they must've pumped into you to ward off rejection—that couldn't have made you a very hospitable host either." She paused for a moment to study the cyborg. Grievous stared back, much more calmly than he could have several minutes ago. "I'm surprised Nagas didn't bring any of this up at the time," she mused aloud. "Of course it's possible, from what you say, that no one really explained the intent of the procedure to him."

"Geonosians do as they're told," Grievous said impatiently. "So you do not think the transfusion affected me?"

"I don't think so. I've already run another blood screen on you since finding out about this Sifo-Dyas business. There were no human elements left, at least none that I could find, and I think now that it was likely pure luck that I found that one human cell at all when I sampled you back on Marku—human red blood cells normally don't live very long. I can run the screen again or take a new sample now if you like and test it specifically for midichlorian levels, but I doubt I'd find them elevated beyond what's average. In fact, I feel quite safe in saying you probably have an unusually low count, perhaps the lowest count of any Kalee alive right now, if only because of the organic limitations I just mentioned."

"I see…"

Lissa regarded the cyborg again. His rant had subsided completely and he'd settled once more into his usual stooped posture as if nothing had ever happened—typical. She recalled what he'd been yelling about when he first blew up.

"General, what did you mean about Dooku wanting to control you?" she asked him. "And you mentioned that he was disappointed and wants you to be angry? What was that all about?"

Grievous hesitated. Explaining it fully would mean revealing that the Count was a Sith Lord, something the woman surely knew nothing about and didn't need to know. "If I had any Force ability, Dooku would be able to sense me all the time," he allowed. "When he first began training me, he used to encourage me to try and feel the flow of our fighting, to use my emotion to direct my moves. I never understood what he was talking about and why he always seemed so displeased with me. Then he…sometimes he would make me angry."

He suddenly groaned and started moving again, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"I am certain that he is the one who ordered the alterations to my aggression center also," Grievous continued. "Dooku is a very powerful Jedi. He is very attuned to anger. When my control is poor, it lets him monitor me, even from a distance. Can you understand that, understand what that means for me?"

Lissa did and looked sadly back at him. It was all starting to fall into place for her. She finally realized that the purpose of all the cyborg's mind alterations wasn't just to focus him on his work, but to also serve as some sort of sick psychic choke chain for his master, Dooku, to yank on whenever he wanted his pet to perform. It seemed the most petty sort of cruelty to her, a possibility that would never have occurred to her on her own. Poor Grievous…no wonder he'd so readily accepted her warning about not removing any more nodules.

"I don't know what to advise you now," she said. "I could try taking out just one of the remaining blocks to try and ease things for you a bit, but if Count Dooku is as sensitive as you say he is when he's around you…" She trailed off and shrugged, helplessly. Grievous just kept weaving, restless and driven and unhappy. He was torn at that moment between sinking into misery and exploding again over the treachery that had been dealt to him.

"They didn't even have to do any of it, did you know that?" he added bitterly. "I would have fought willingly for the Confederacy. I would have done what they wanted of me until my dues were paid. There was never any reason to alter me." His voice rose and became beseeching. "I'm not supposed to be like this! I am not a mean person. It's true that I was always aggressive and domineering and harsh when required—I am a military man, after all. But I was never bad-tempered about it—I'm not! I have a good disposition!"

"Of course, General, I believe you," she murmured. Something else occurred to her and she said, more urgently, "Sir, is there any chance that Count Dooku could read your mind? Jedi can do that, can't they? Could he find out that you've regained your personal memories?"

Grievous considered it. "I don't think he would try," he replied at last. "Dooku hates touching alien minds. And I think my implants make my mind too droid-like for him. He would never lower himself." Abruptly, he laughed, a short, harsh grunt. "One benefit of all that's been done to me."

There seemed little left to say after that. Lissa saw Grievous glance at the door and knew that he wanted to get away to mull over all she'd revealed to him. "What are you going to do, General?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. I have to think first, check on a few things." His gaze hardened and he said, with sudden coldness, "You are not to say anything about any of this to anyone, is that understood?"

"Don't worry, sir, I won't. I'm very good at keeping secrets."

"Of that I have no doubt," Grievous muttered, and with that, he turned and left.

Lissa stared glumly after him. Then she turned back to her computer and put her head down on the desk, cradling it in her folded arms, and stayed like that for a long while. The painkiller she'd taken was wearing off and her hurt leg was starting to smart again and her bruises ache, and she felt sick all the way through. When she eventually did lift her head again, her eyes were wet. "Bag that," she whispered, and savagely wiped the tears away with the back of one hand before they spilled over. Crying solved nothing and neither did self-pity, she thought. She'd done what she had of her own volition and now had to live with the results, no matter what. But that was the end of her saboteur's career. Never again would she get involved in any sort of subterfuge that affected another person directly—it was just too nerve-wracking. Her temperament was better suited for swiping information and maybe the odd office pen, nothing more.

The woman got up and found that she'd stiffened up again, and even though she was not normally given to shirking her work, decided to give herself sick leave for the remainder of the day. She also thought it might be worthwhile to finally visit the ship's infirmary for a legitimate personal reason. Neimoidians were such comfort-loving creatures…Lissa had a hunch that they had far better treatments for everyday aches and pains than just another dose of analgesics. She just hoped that the medical staff didn't bear her too much of a grudge for having monopolized their workspace so often while tending to Grievous…

She exited her battered body with the same grim fortitude with which Grievous had borne out his battered mind just a short time ago, and limped her way down to the Invisible Hand's sickbay.

TBC


	16. Feelers

Happy 2006 greetings to everyone and thanks to all my readers for hanging in there for so long! A special thanks to those who took the time to let me know what they thought of the end of the chapter 'A Veil, Parted', in which Grievous regained his memories. This was a scene that I'd actually had in mind for months, almost from the time I first started this story, and I was quite anxious about being able to write it well enough to do the visuals in my head justice. It was supposed to be highly dramatic and I gather that came across, so I'm happy, whew! Never thought it'd require fourteen long chapters before I could work the darn scene in, but—whatever it takes, eh? 

A lot more of Grievous's Kaleesh background and personal history will start to show up in this story from now on and most of it's going to be stuff that I'll be extrapolating from a single source, Grievous's graphic novel-styled 'origin' story 'The Eyes Of Revolution' by Warren Fu. I'm aware of all the other official source material on the character that's out there and will cheerfully keep looking it over as more becomes available, but doubt I'll be using much of it—I for sure won't be using his 'real' name! So, if the Grievous you're reading about here is an interpretation you wind up hating as things progress, don't ever blame anyone but me (and maybe Warren Fu). The rest of Grievous's official creative team gets a pass.

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 16 – Feelers

Lissa Veleroko might have needed rest and plenty of it in order to recover from her misadventures on Quispamsis, but General Grievous, though no less wounded, did not. By the time she decided to visit the Invisible Hand's infirmary, Grievous had long since already finished seeing to any residual official business that couldn't be put off and had ensconced himself in his quarters high up in his flagship's lofty conning tower. He needed a lengthy spell of brooding to finish coming to terms with all that his physician had just revealed to him. And the first thing he wanted to do was look at himself long and carefully, his mind free and fully aware at last to evaluate what he'd physically become.

He had the perfect place in which to do it. His real quarters, the luxurious private suite sited at the back of his ship's observation pod, had been designed for Neimoidian tastes and that meant it contained a wastefully spacious dressing room equipped with a full-length mirror alcove in which the suite's occupant could vainly admire himself from all angles before strutting forth. Grievous had only ever used the room as storage for several spare campaign cloaks and his ivory-coloured cape, his version of a dress uniform. Now, for the first time, he went into it all the way to its end and turned on the alcove's lighting. What he saw illuminated in the mirrors soon made him groan.

If only his body weren't so obviously mechanical! It would have been easier for others to see him as simply a Kaleesh warrior clad in elaborate armour if he'd been constructed with more material bulk through his upper limbs and waist. But this gaunt, stripped-down frame! It was no wonder that people mistook him for a droid. He leaned closer to the reflection directly before him, studying his facial plate, the ritual lines engraved into it above his eyes, the jagged tooth-like flourishes on either side of his vocabulator. There were more ritual marks etched elsewhere on his armour, beneath his metal throat and on his chest, even on his pelvic plates, and he had several clear memories of himself hovering behind a pair of Geonosian engineers, watching as they machine-burned the lines into the detached plates and looking angry and impatient all the while because they were taking so long. What had he been thinking to insist on such a thing, to cling to his heritage so fiercely? Grievous had no idea. He couldn't remember anything of what he'd been thinking back then.

Could his family accept his altered appearance? Would they? He thought they would. His household back on Kalee was comparatively wealthy. They had their own Holonet feed. His wives and children would have seen him on the news, would have had time to become adjusted to his looks by now…yes, the boys especially might even be quite taken by this sleek new body of his that had been so well designed to function as a lethal weapon. And he still had his eyes, enhanced within, but still recognizably his own on the outside, and his good semblance of his former voice. It was all he really needed to communicate. He had no concerns about his ability to control his enormous strength, nor was he worried about what anyone would think of his actions. His wives were all smart. They'd see right through any Republic propaganda and attempts to vilify him, and his people were, in any case, a lot sturdier and more pragmatic about the necessity for harsh, decisive measures in times of war than were most of the simpering species he'd come to know. They'd understand his eagerness to fight.

He was much less confident about the matter of his dicey disposition. He wouldn't be welcomed if he couldn't control his temper. Such things went to the very heart of his society. Unstable females were already insufferable enough, but everyone on Kalee hated a bad-tempered male. They were considered no less than a public menace—aggravating to other males, dangerous to women and children alike, and a total disgrace to themselves and their bloodline. Most were weeded out early on when they stupidly challenged an equally aggressive, stronger adolescent who'd kill them when they refused to knuckle under. Those that did survive to adulthood would be so unfavourably viewed and avoided that they'd eventually leave and take up the life of a wanderer, roaming the wilds and the outskirts of civilization until providence or a predator or their own vicious natures finally did them in. On rare occasions, one of them would return with the meanness finally burnt out of him by years of solitude and deprivation, but even then no female would ever breed with them. They usually lived out the remainder of their lives as quiet bachelors and died without issue, sometimes taking in a low-status widow who'd had no family to turn to in later life. Grievous couldn't bear the thought of returning home and being shunned by his own people. Just the possibility of it filled him with cold dread and anxiety.

He jerked himself away from the mirror and stalked out of his quarters and out onto his observation deck. Fragmented thoughts and snatches of ideas whirled though his mind as he walked. He wondered what his family was doing at just that moment. Did they think, after his long silence, that he'd abandoned them? Assume that he was working under tight security restrictions that prohibited personal communications? Grievous remembered agreeing to his surgery while floating half-dead in the bacta tank on Geonosis and regretting that there'd been no time to consult with anyone at home, and then…nothing, no indication at all in his memories of trying to contact anyone on Kalee ever again. He probably hadn't even thought about his family until now. It was shameful…

The entrance to Grievous's private suite came by again and he strode on for his second spin around the raised walkway. He could pace like this for hours, never feeling the slightest fatigue, accompanied only by the stars and the ships of his fleet all around him. He again contemplated the problem of his abnormal temper. His physician would fix that. He'd make her take out the remaining nodules after the war was over and then he'd be all right again—he had to be. A good thing the woman was so soft and naïve. Instead of trying to help him, she could have killed him so easily, just a slip of that laser she used and he'd be gone. Or she could have nicked a blood vessel and just closed him up again to slowly bleed out and drop dead a day or two later—he'd seen it happen to soldiers in the field, suffer a bad blow to the head and seem to recover, then suddenly die. The more Grievous thought about what Lissa could have done to him, the more agitated he got. He'd been so sure he'd had her completely cowed and under control—she was still afraid of him, true, but obviously not enough! What to do…lean on her harder? appeal to her altruistic inclinations? What irked him most in retrospect was how readily she'd deceived him. He thought he'd gotten quite good at reading humans, yet the blasted woman had turned out to be more inscrutable than Dooku!

Well, there was nothing he could do about her for now. He had more pressing concerns, establishing the status of his planet and his own family for one. Abruptly, he halted, oriented himself using his fleet's course, then stepped to the closest viewport panel and stared out into space, gaze fixed in one particular direction. Somewhere along that bearing, an impossibly long distance away, lay his homeworld. Intense longing flooded through him. He was seized with the sudden desire to rush back into his quarters and use his own communications gear to simply call up his family or one of his relatives or trusted friends to find out what was going on back home, but equally strong was his suspicion that any such attempt would be detected, logged, and secretly relayed—a backup warning to those who'd tampered with his memories in case his brain alterations began to fail. There was just no reason for him to be contacting anyone on the planet or even inquiring about anything to do with Kalee, unless it were personal. Grievous was certain that he wasn't meant to be having personal thoughts of any sort unless they had to do with killing Jedi and warfare.

He started pacing again, feeling deeply embittered and frustrated by his wretched situation. The Intergalactic Banking Clan and the Separatists as a whole were supposed to be helping his people finish getting over their devastating famine and back on their feet and able to independently care for themselves again as part of the agreement he'd made with the fledgling Confederacy in exchange for his restoration and his services. If he could somehow find out whether they were even still honouring that agreement and discovered that they weren't, he swore he would turn the might of his droid armies against the Sith Lords themselves, no matter what the cost to himself. But if all was still all right, if his people and family were safe…well, that wasn't a pleasant thing to contemplate either…he'd still be beholden to his masters, would still have to fight for them despite knowing how badly they'd betrayed him. Or had both of them known? His conviction that Count Dooku had been involved from the start was still strong, but what about Sidious? Had the orders to tamper with Grievous's mind come down from the very top or had it all been Dooku's doing, a little personal project undertaken to create the ideal Supreme Commander and which the Count had used to ingratiate himself? More vexing questions and all of them maddeningly unanswerable and likely to remain so, unless Grievous stopped valuing his very existence. It was enough to drive one to pace all day and night!

The only bright light on his dark horizon was that his fleet was en route to Nees'n'ublay for another major supply run and some minor refitting. He ought to be able to find out at Nee'port's moon base operations whether the fighting closest to Kalee had expanded to include the space about his homeworld. That would be something, at least, and his wanting an overview of the entire war theatre wouldn't seem out of place. Yet even if he found that Kalee was under attack or occupied, what could he do? He wasn't supposed to care!

Grievous suddenly stiffened and his steps grew stilted. A possible solution had occurred to him. A moment later, he spun about and headed back to his suite. He had a long overdue and carefully worded message he needed to compose…

Two days later, late in the evening of the day before the fleet was due to dock at Nee'port, Lissa Veleroko had a visitor, a battle droid that had been sent over to the tender to fetch her and escort her into Grievous's presence. She changed hurriedly back into her uniform workdress, feeling quite apprehensive, listening all the while to Gregory's non-stop muttering about the General's incredible rudeness. The fact that Grievous had sent a droid instead of just a message didn't seem to bode well for her. What did he expect, that she'd bolt on him?

Finding herself ferried right up to the General's quarters further demoralized her. Grievous was waiting for Lissa on the walkway, close to the elevator entrance. He dismissed the escorting droid before he would speak to her.

"Ah, Miss Veleroko. Come with me."

He led her into his private quarters. Lissa followed cautiously, gaze darting from side to side. So this was where Grievous actually lived! Alien-designed or not, she easily recognized the usual appointments typical of luxury ship-board accommodations—an expansive living room, an attached open kitchen and dining area, a space for working, entrances into what were no doubt a huge bedroom and washing and dressing facilities. Almost all of what she could see appeared virtually untouched. If it hadn't been for a collection of personalized equipment that'd obviously been recently installed in the work space, it would have been hard to know whether anyone was even occupying the suite.

Grievous was in neutral mode, standing upright with his legs straightened out more than usual beneath him and wearing his impassive face. Lissa relaxed a little. From the look of him, she was sure he just wanted to talk some more, finally, about what had been done to him, and talk was always good. But instead of conversation, what he wanted to say to her amounted to a set of orders.

"The fleet will be docking at Nees'n'ublay tomorrow," he said. "Will you be going down to the planet during our time in port?"

"Yes, I expect so, General," Lissa replied, mystified.

"Good." He held out a comm chip. "Take this and send the message it contains from a public-access computer station. It's already addressed and formatted and you'll need a unit that's either Tempest- or Niwack Network-connected to get it through. I also want you to create a temporary account. Attach that address before you send the message. If you get a reply…" Here, he suddenly faltered for no reason Lissa could perceive. "If you get a reply, it will come quickly, within a day. You'll need to access your account at least once more before we leave Nee'port to check for that."

Lissa had taken the chip and turned the small crystal disc over several times in her hand. "Who's the message for?" she asked.

"That is none of your business. All you need to know is that you must do this as discretely as possible."

The woman looked up at Grievous, a little sadly. "I'm sorry, sir, but if you want to involve me in some secret scheme of revenge, then I think I deserve to know at least the gist of what's going on." She held the chip back out to him. "If you don't want to tell me anything, you'd better send a droid instead. You can always memory-wipe him afterwards if discretion's important to you."

As she expected, her words and action instantly ignited Grievous's rage. She knew by now that nothing infuriated him more than a refusal to yield to his domination, but after having just dug her way out of one massive steaming pile, she was not about to let anyone knock her headfirst into another without knowing something of what lay in its depths. The cyborg reared up and stepped closer, ignoring the proffered chip, towering above her. "You're disobeying me?" he rasped, breathing hard.

"Not disobeying, exactly. I just—I need to know more about what you want me to do. For all I know, this chip might contain a declaration of war against—against—well, I don't know against whom, but it could! I want to help you, sir, it's just…you've got to give me more," she pleaded.

Grievous wavered. She could see him struggling, trying to contain himself, the civil man within battling with his impulse to lash out. He sharply turned his face aside with a strangled grunt, almost as though snapping an invisible tether, then said, "The message is for a colleague on Kalee. I can't use the usual channels. My communications are being monitored."

"Oh, I…see."

"I haven't spoken with anyone at home since before my accident," Grievous added.

Slow embarrassment and guilt crept through Lissa. She'd assumed the worst of Grievous and hadn't even considered that concern for a family left behind might have awoken along with his memories—stupid of her, really. The poor man was probably half-sick with worry. She also instantly grasped his dilemma and now that she understood, her attitude did an about-turn.

"I'm sorry, sir. In that case, of course I'll send the message," Lissa assured him. "I think I already know a good place to do it, too. I did a little research at an off-base library down on the planet the last time we visited. I'm pretty sure their computers all had Tempest access."

The cyborg's relief over the woman's sudden turnaround washed away most of his remaining anger. He settled back down again, although he persisted in hovering intimidatingly close to her. "Try to avoid identifying yourself as much as possible when you create your account," he told her. "If you must, list Nagas as your employer and use the tender as your residence—it still has a civilian registry. This mustn't be traceable back to me. I do not think that anyone but Dooku would connect your name with mine, even if it were noted, but it is better to be cautious."

"Don't worry, General. I know a few tricks when it comes to covering my tracks. How many days are we scheduled to stay in port?"

"Six. If the work on the vessels is finished early—five."

"More than enough for me, sir. I'm sure I'll be able to get that message out and check back for a reply without any trouble."

"I am relying on your confidence," Grievous said, rather glumly, and dismissed her. He watched her walk off with his message in hand. It was a bad moment for him. He didn't trust Lissa and wanted to recall her, snatch the chip back, and take his chances alone or send a droid. But that would be beyond foolish. No droid even understood the meaning of discretion, and as for himself, it wasn't as though he could throw on a different cloak and a head cloth and expect to walk about incognito.

Grievous turned away from his troubles with a hollow sigh, resigned himself, and went into his work space. Like most Kaleesh, he was a fatalist and recognized that this was one of those times when he'd just have to trust in fate, if not the woman herself, to resolve his problem. In the meantime, he had plenty of work to do, looking over and approving a massive backlog of work order requests, for one. The officers on those ships crewed by Neimoidians sometimes tried to slip by a few improvements that were only geared towards making their own lives a little cosier rather than adding to the battle-worthiness of their vessels. Grievous always took particular pleasure in ferreting out such bogus proposals and quashing them.

His fleet docked the next afternoon in Nee'port's military yard without incident. Grievous had no meetings scheduled this time aside from those relating to logistics and repair, and was otherwise free to do as he pleased. He didn't run into any nasty surprises when he shuttled down to the moon base and was soon able to get the information he wanted in the operations center and determine that Kalee was still classed as a friendly neutral planet and uninvolved in the war. Their one-time enemies, the Huk, had undergone a change, though—their status as hostiles had been upped a level. They'd probably gone whining to the Republic for protection again or mouthed off about their powerful friends to the wrong people, Grievous thought. It'd serve them right if they got attacked. He'd feel considerable smug pleasure if that happened.

Upgraded versions of many of Grievous's favourite weapons were starting to appear. Among the most interesting of the ones delivered to him was a new type of flying rearmament droid specifically designed to deliver fresh payloads to hailfire droids in the field. It compensated well for the hailfire's one great drawback, its limited supply of missiles. A dozen new AGDs equipped with greater firepower and a full gross of improved Vulture droids, faster and more independently-thinking, were also turned over to him. The most insidious new weapons Grievous received were supplies of several experimental biologicals, one intended for use against a broad spectrum of humanoids, the others more species-specific. The bioweapons went straight over to one of his purely mechanized ships, to be handled by droids alone, of course. Limited though his own organics were, there was still enough of Grievous's former self left to make him as susceptible to the biologicals' lethal effects as any other living being.

Grievous loved fine weaponry as much as he always had and the opportunity to employ all these new instruments of war excited and enthused him. He was constantly on the move, to look over the ordnance being delivered, to inspect the upgrades being installed, to check on the progress of the repairs and speak with the techs and engineers involved. When the Invisible Hand's sister ship, Lucid Voice, pulled in and docked three days into the General's stay, he even swallowed his distaste and went over to talk with the Neimoidian captain in order to better get to know the man should they ever have to collaborate closely in the future. Wherever Grievous went, a pair or two of his MagnaGuards went with him. He'd discovered that taking the fearsome combat droids along was a great deterrent against obnoxious efforts to socialize with him.

Midway through day four, Grievous learned that Count Dooku was passing by with his private fleet and was scheduled to dock for refuelling late that afternoon. The cyborg's feelings upon receiving this news were ambivalent. He would have preferred to not see the Count in person at all until he'd had more time to adjust himself to his new reality, yet he was also eager to seize an opportunity to discuss new battle strategies with his superior and have his tentative plans approved. Grievous wound up carrying on with his own business, leaving it up to Dooku to seek him out, if he wished. As it turned out, the Count came looking for his Supreme Commander quite soon after arriving.

He waylaid Grievous aboard one of his Commerce Guild destroyers, in the midst of being briefed by the Gossam captain. Just the sight of Dooku provoked in Grievous a surge of hatred so powerful and unexpected that he couldn't help but bristle up for a few seconds before regaining control of himself. The Gossam captain floundered a bit too, goggling at the much acclaimed human man and then returning her full attention to the cyborg General who frightened her even more. She scuttled off as soon as she was done talking and Grievous dismissed her, even though they were standing on her own bridge.

Dooku came forward and nodded a polite greeting. "General. The refit goes well, I presume."

"Count. Yes."

The Sith Lord raised one eyebrow. Even for Grievous, that response had been uncommonly brusque, and Dooku didn't care for the flash of malicious anger he'd sensed in him either. Too long away from battle, no doubt. He'd seen it before in other low barbaric types he'd recruited. If their bloodthirsty savagery wasn't given a regular outlet, they'd soon revert to behaving like the vicious animals they really were.

"No problems? You're satisfied with the new vessels?" Dooku inquired further.

"Everything is fine," Grievous replied irritably. "Estimated completion of all repairs and upgrades, seventeen hundred tomorrow."

"A day early."

That part didn't surprise Dooku in the slightest. His gaze flicked over the two MagnaGuards standing to either side of the bridge entrance. If Grievous had been spending all his time lurking about on one ship or another, hovering around the job sites and dragging those expensive elite droids with him everywhere he went, the bigger wonder would be if people hadn't been rushing through their work to get away from him.

"I see that Lucid Voice is also in," the Count went on, his smooth deep voice unruffled. "Have you considered paying your respects to her captain?"

"I visited already."

Grievous's head jacked up as he said this, and for the first time since Dooku had entered the bridge, he found that he could look at the man without undue rancour. He was slipping back into the established routines of how they related to one another, subordinate and superior, student and master, and Grievous found, to his surprise, that it came quite easily to him. It would have been more difficult had they shared the slightest cameraderie. The cyborg's initial resentment would have seemed more unusual then, his brief fit of anger a warning to the Count that something had changed and was not right between them. But Dooku had always expected anger and resentment, had encouraged it even, and it began to dawn on Grievous that it had to do less with any innate cruelty in the man than it did with a terrible weakness—powerful Sith or not, Dooku needed the constant reassurance of being in charge, needed to be above others and able to control them to himself feel confident and whole. Grievous tucked this revelation back into the recesses of his mind for later study. He'd never thought of Dooku as being weak before, yet there it was, as plain as could be, now that Grievous had regained his ability to think on a more subtle level.

Since the subject of the Lucid Voice had been brought up, Grievous leapt at the chance to tell Dooku about a scheme he and the other carrier's captain had discussed, that of possibly swapping Mid Rim patrols on occasion in order to confound Republic spies. He expounded on other ideas he had in mind and the Count proved open to them all as the remainder of the afternoon wore on—when it came to professional matters, the human was always willing to listen and would become almost respectful towards him, Grievous thought. It was a sham, though. Dooku only wanted his military expertise. Grievous wondered at himself that he'd never before seen how thoroughly the Count truly disliked him.

The General's proposals pleased Dooku, and when he excused himself to attend to dinner, he told Grievous that he was granting his crew several hours of leave afterwards and that he wanted the cyborg to report aboard his private galleon for a lightsaber session that evening. Grievous received the request and the change it made to his own plans without disgruntlement. Even if it came with some abuse attached, he never failed to learn something whenever he trained with the crafty old Sith Lord.

What Dooku wanted to teach him on this day was how to better protect himself against the use of the Force. The Jedi now considered Grievous a very dangerous foe, the Count informed his student. Lord Sidious, working undercover on Coruscant, had learned from foolish Jedi whose trust he'd cultivated that the Council had begun advising members of its Order to avoid close combat with Grievous and to try using their Force-abilities to overcome him instead. Grievous would have to become more aggressive than ever, surprise and intimidate his opponents and force his fights with them to a swift conclusion whenever possible. The General perked up upon hearing this. He knew of no better way to intimidate than to use all four of his arms at once—was the Count about to allow him to spar with multiple weapons again at last?

No. This lesson was about defence. Dooku told Grievous to prepare himself and then went on the offensive, using his full arsenal of Force-powers against the cyborg from the start. It went badly for Grievous at once. Needing to keep one magnetized foot or hand firmly anchored hampered him and made it very difficult for him to employ his usual graceful, acrobatic moves to counter the Count's attacks. Dooku soon overwhelmed him and Grievous was forced to leap away to avoid being skewered. The instant he relinquished his grip on the deck, Dooku nailed him, sending him crashing against the nearest wall of the cargo bay. Grievous went down hard, sprawling. He was too sturdily built for the rough treatment to damage him, but his pride was hurt.

"Again," Dooku ordered, lips pressed into a taut, thin line.

Grievous fought back more aggressively this time, trying to keep his master at bay without needing to move too much. Dooku's Force-manipulations were far more subtly executed than those of other Jedi he'd encountered. Usually, Grievous could tell when a Jedi was about to try and attack him with the Force. It required so much concentration that they'd have to stop fighting with their lightsaber, just for a second, which was all the time Grievous normally needed to ready himself. But Dooku didn't give him that second. He could follow up a thrust or a slash with an immediate Force-push strong enough to send Grievous flying. The General was soon caught again, in just the same way, forced into a too-hasty retreat because he couldn't utilize his speed and agility to properly defend himself and smashed down onto the deck when he jumped and lost purchase. He hopped back up afterwards faster than before. Grievous was starting to get mad, with himself more than anything.

He entered into the third match with his intellect more fully engaged. Since he couldn't make full use of his usual prowess, he'd have to devise something new, try and outthink his opponent. Grievous already had a natural propensity to gait, to walk swiftly over the ground in double-quick time in lieu of a trot whenever he wanted to travel fast. He sank down slightly on his haunches, shifting his point of balance downward, and began replacing his evasive leaps and springs from foot to foot with quick little step sequences. It kept him in constant contact with the deck and the coordination required to smoothen out his action, to constantly lock and unlock his feet as he shifted them rapidly about, was not as difficult as he expected. Instead of dancing lightly above the floor, half in the air, he began gliding across it, his movements now more sinuous and winding and fluid than ever. It worked—to a point. It took Dooku twice as long this time before he could break Grievous out of his gait and then, wham! down the cyborg went again, in an ungainly clatter of mechanical limbs.

"Better," Dooku conceded.

They fought on, with Grievous refining his new style all the while, able to up his speed as the computerized implants slaved to his mind processed, analyzed, and finally adjusted their own programming to assist him, heuristically learning as Grievous learned. And now he saw something else, that even though Dooku could integrate his Force-attacks much more skilfully than could most Jedi, he was still incapable of wielding a lightsaber and the Force itself at the exact same time. He needed the Force to guide his swordsmanship, Grievous realized—another revelation! A way of overcoming his master's one great advantage suddenly opened up for him.

Grievous lost his focus and Dooku won again, not by hurling him away, but simply by out-duelling him. The cyborg conceded and listened to the Count's rather stinging critique afterwards in sullen silence. They set up once more and Grievous waited obediently for Dooku's signal, gathering himself, chafing a little in his eagerness to continue.

It all came together for him this time. Dooku could still force him to retreat, but Grievous no longer stubbornly fought back until the last possible instant—if he had to, he jumped in anticipation while the Count was still swinging at him, to gain that one extra vital second to secure himself. The Sith Lord almost succeeded in knocking him over several times even so. Grievous would feel the Force push at him like the gust off a screaming gale, invisible yet packing power enough to send his body skittering back around his own fastened foot or make him lean forward, into the flow, then he'd have to recoup fast, gliding back out of reach before the Count could himself jump forward and catch him. It wasn't the way Grievous liked to fight, all backing up and defence, yet he was still fighting. And the longer the duello went on without Dooku's being able to score an outright victory or Force-slam his student down, the better for Grievous. Count Dooku might have been very powerful and immensely talented and experienced, but he was still a man, an old man at that. There had to come a time when even the rejuvenating and reenergizing benefits of communing with the Force would fail him.

The two clashed in yet another violent exchange of blows, and for the first time all evening, Grievous managed to make Dooku take a backward step of his own before he had to yield to the human's superior skill and slide away. It piqued the Count's own immense pride and he came after Grievous with greater intensity. More whirling blows, the lightsabers briefly matching one another, thrust for parry, then the cyborg glided out of reach to regroup again. It had turned into a stalemate. Grievous had learned his lesson and had become too wary, and Dooku, tiring at last, could no longer catch and engage him long enough to defeat him.

It was incredible, it was infuriating, it was not to be borne. A true teacher would have taken joy in Grievous's swift solution and his ability to hold his own. Dooku was a Sith Lord first, and could not tolerate the thought of anyone but his own master, Lord Sidious, bettering him. Again he went after Grievous, but it was different this time—it was becoming a real fight, with Dooku determined to enforce his will on the insolent metal brute and put him in his place. Grievous's temper was also rising. He was angry because of what he knew the Count had done to him, angry about what he was doing to him, angry about everything. He met Dooku's assault with a vicious attack of his own and the two revolved about each other in furious tandem, their weapons blurring, sparks and static showering whenever the bright energy blades clashed momentarily together.

There! The human had misstepped! Never had they duelled together for so long. It was taking its toll—Dooku was weary, his lightsaber sagging! Grievous pressed forward eagerly. If only he could drain him a little bit—

An agonizing jolt of pure energy surged through the cyborg. He was instantly flung off his feet, every system in his body disrupted, every intricate synthetic part of him briefly dead and useless. Dooku had used Force-lightning on him at point-blank range and Grievous had never seen it coming.

He lay gasping and helpless, though still aware, as Count Dooku came up to him. "Tut, General. I warned you to be careful of Force-attacks," he said.

Outrage almost blinded Grievous. Jedi don't use Force-lightning! he wanted to shout, but he couldn't speak at all, not yet. Dooku looked coldly down on him. "Would you like me to summon your physician?"

Grievous's rage was replaced by pure disgust. At that moment he hated the Sith Lord as much as he hated the whole Jedi Order.

Dooku waited for several more minutes while Grievous recovered. When he was finally functioning well enough again to stagger to his feet, Dooku gave him back his fallen lightsaber.

"That'll do for now. Good night, General," the Count said, deliberately turned his back, and left the cargo bay. They were the last words he said to his Supreme Commander before his galleon departed a half hour later.

Grievous was insufferable to everyone he met for the remainder of the night and the following day, and it wasn't until he'd returned to the Invisible Hand and his fleet was pulling out of port that he finally found a reason to relinquish his bad mood. It was a message left by Lissa Veleroko, advising him that she'd be coming aboard at twenty-one hundred hours that evening to see to some office supplies and that she had the information he'd requested should he wish to come by and pick it up.

He surprised her by meeting her shuttle right in the hangar bay, striding up before the ramp was even fully down. Lissa herself was feeling pretty good. She'd had a relaxing leave and some fun with her Geonosian buddies, had gotten all her supply requests filled, and had sent out Grievous's message without any trouble, just as she'd promised. The sight of the cyborg waiting for her actually made her smile.

"Good evening, General Grievous."

"Where is it?" he snapped.

"Right here, sir. I sent it from the main library just as I—"

Grievous grabbed the disc out of her hand, spun around, and raced off. She stared after him, dumbfounded. So much for gratitude!

Lissa knew that there'd been a reply to Grievous's message (encrypted—she'd snooped), but she never heard a word back about it, not later that night or over the next few following days. On the third day after leaving Nee'port, Grievous finally did contact her, but only to bump up his next scheduled maintenance session. She'd learned that his doing so after a spell of inactivity usually meant that battle duty was not far away and so was in a rather more somber frame of mind when she saw him again.

Grievous still had nothing to say to her, in fact, he acted as if absolutely nothing had ever changed between them. Lissa couldn't fathom it. He'd become so talkative that morning when she'd confessed what she'd done to him. She couldn't understand how he could carry on without wanting to know more or feeling the urge to discuss things further. He didn't seem angry with her, exactly, and when they went over to the infirmary for his wash, he hunched down under the hot water spray with the same apparent enjoyment and cooperated with her just as he had before, but there was also nothing new, no indication whatsoever of what he thought of her now or what more he expected of her, if anything. His lack of additional response left her hanging and feeling quite frustrated. Normally, she was comfortable with the cyborg's silence. Now it just made her uneasy. Before long, the awkwardness she felt got so bad that she felt compelled to say something. After all, it was always possible that Grievous was feeling awkward too and was hiding it because he was unsure of how to approach her…wasn't it?

Lissa studied the General's mask and closed eyes doubtfully. She'd dropped all pretence of cleaning him just so she could better inspect his exterior some time ago and usually brought her entire droid wash kit along now, even strapping on a waterproof apron full of pockets to hold her grooming tools. She was currently brushing a bit of stubborn crud out of one of his elaborate double elbow joints. He looked pretty peaceful…receptive… Perhaps if she tried something self-effacing…

"General? I have to admit…I'm a little surprised you kept your appointment at all," she said in a low voice. "I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want me working on you anymore."

Her attempt back-fired. Grievous's eyes popped wide open and he jerked his head around to glare at her. "What choice do I have?" he snapped. "You have made it impossible for me to go to anyone else."

Lissa winced. So much for trying to strike up a cordial conversation. But even as she was mentally rebuking herself and deciding never to address Grievous first again without a good and necessary reason, the cyborg was himself already regretting his sharp retort. He'd seen her slight flinch and the subsequent droop in her carriage, and, mindful of his need to keep her onside and sympathetic to him, added on a kinder note, "I did not mean to suggest that I would go elsewhere if I did have that choice. I have always been satisfied with your work, more than satisfied, even now. It is only your character I have a problem with."

"My—I b-beg your pardon?" Lissa sputtered, indignant. She couldn't argue with his first remarks and had taken them hard, and had been surprised and pleased when he'd seemed about to apologize—but this! Of all the—! She bit back the rest of her outrage and began scrubbing his arm, hard. Grievous kept staring at her. She usually handled him with a certain considerate gentleness he'd come to value. This was like being suddenly cleaned by a service droid, and a not particularly adept one at that.

"You are angry," he said.

Oh, brilliant observation, General! Lissa thought. What she finally did say in reply, through gritted teeth, was, "Yes, I am, sir. Very angry."

"Would you care to explain why?"

She flung back a dirty look. He appeared sincere. He really didn't understand how he'd just insulted her.

"I just find it…outrageous…" Here, she pulled down hard on his wrist, straightening his arm out further and twisting it to better get at both sides of his forearm. "…that someone who thinks it's perfectly all right to kidnap an innocent civilian and frighten her half to death…" Another sharp tug. "…would have the nerve to consider themselves fit to comment on anything to do with morality." She finished off by shifting her attention to the long armour plate protecting his inner forearm and applied her brush there with ferocious zeal, even though there wasn't a speck of dirt to be seen.

Grievous's brows came way down, hooding his eyes. "Are you still upset over how I recruited you?" he said. "That was a necessary operational decision. You found out too much about me. I couldn't risk leaving you free."

"It wasn't necessary for you to blow up Marku's moon after I'd already caved in!"

"That was targeting practice—"

"That's not funny!" Lissa gasped.

"I am not joking!" Grievous retorted, shouting now. "I—you— Why are you being so difficult?"

"I'm being difficult? I'm the one who was just trying to start a little conversation! You know—verbal interaction, give and take, without one party constantly trying to intimidate and threaten the other?"

"All right! Would you care to hear my side of it? Why it is that I'm troubled by your character?"

"You go right ahead, sir. It's not as if I could stop you."

"No, it most certainly is not," the cyborg grated out. He took several loud breaths, as if gathering himself. Lissa waited, sullen, still scouring away at the exact same spot on his forearm plating. "From my perspective," Grievous said, "what you did to me was no better than what the Separatists did. You operated on me without consultation or obtaining my consent and it is clear to me now that you had no true understanding of what you were doing. It was all just another experimental procedure, done without my knowledge, and then you waited to see what would happen, just as the Geonosians and Munns waited on Geonosis."

"Oh, but—"

"I am speaking! You betrayed my trust. You surgically tampered with me in a way that could have destroyed my sanity. Lied to me. Deceived me." His embittered disgust over reciting this litany of flaws mounted so high that he began trembling, a fine quiver that Lissa could feel right through her grip on his arm. "I hate that about your species!" he suddenly blurted out. "I hate how you lie even to each other and I hate how you pretend to like one another when you don't. It sickens me. My people aren't like that. I'm not used to it and I won't tolerate it any longer, not from someone under my command!"

He blasted Lissa with another glare laden with such loathing that she flinched again. But she was also still well armoured with her own righteous indignation and not about to step down.

"We're not all lying cads," she protested, "and I don't know what else you expected me to do. Do you really believe I could have said to you, oh, General, by the way, I think the people who put you back together screwed around with your mind to try and control you—would you like me to try and repair the damage? Of course not! You would have turned me in or—or killed me on the spot, I'm sure."

"I could still turn you in," Grievous growled. "I think I would even be allowed to remain as I am now if I did that."

"But you wouldn't have anyone to help you anymore then, would you, sir?"

The cyborg fell silent. No, he wouldn't. No one to act as his go-between and no end to his gnawing rage. He glowered at his physician, but she'd already returned to her work and was looking over the junction between the two halves of his lower right arm. Her lips were pressed tightly together and the skin about them was taut. She looked unhappy and resentful and Grievous was again reminded of his need to keep her favourably disposed towards him. And she had a point, somewhat. The truth was that he had no idea of how he would have reacted had she come to him honestly from the start. He might well have responded with violence and disbelief and snuffed her out with a single impulsive slap.

"Very well. It seems that both of us may have behaved poorly in the past," he said at last. "You should have thought of a way to approach me with the truth and I could have used a more…politic approach to secure your services." He could feel the small human hands going over his arm start doing so with a lighter touch. She was listening to him, although she kept her head down. Grievous shifted slightly from foot to foot. He didn't like trying to curry favour from people. It wasn't in his nature.

"I cannot simply release you," he went on. "You made that impossible the moment you decided to tamper with my mind alterations, you understand that, yes?"

Lissa cast a wary glance at his face. "I know," she muttered.

"Then perhaps we can do this: Continue to help me. Keep this secret and remain loyal to me, and when I ask it of you later, finish repairing the damage in my brain. Do all that and I will give you my word of honour that I will do all I can to set you free as close to your preferred destination as possible."

The woman's cautious regard now escalated into outright doubt. "That's quite the turnaround," she remarked. "You'll forgive me if I seem a little dubious, sir."

"As I said earlier, what choice do I have?" Grievous said, with a sourness that seemed rather more in character than his stilted attempt at conciliation. "And I am…grateful for what you have done. But this has been a blow to me, to discover that those I work for are not to be trusted. It affects me badly, more so than I think a human like you can comprehend. I don't want to have to worry about my subordinates also."

And there it was, as close to an apology and an explanation of his own which she was ever likely to get from the cyborg, Lissa thought. She stopped her pretence at working and just stood, mulling over his words, unaware that she was still hanging onto his wrist with both hands. Grievous, as well, was unaware. He was too intensely focused on the woman's reaction.

"I don't want to be worrying anymore either," she admitted. "I didn't enjoy having to deceive you." She tilted her head in a half quizzical, half supplicating way and asked, "You really mean it, that you'd let me go?"

"I do not give my word lightly, so yes."

"Well, I guess we could…try. Given that neither of us have many options."

"True, unfortunately."

His physician took a deep breath, one that was none too steady. "Okay," she decided. "A fresh start then."

"Good. Look at me."

She did, gazing fearlessly into the bright yellow-gold eyes subjecting her to the most meticulous of examinations from but a few hand-spans away. She'd hoped for something different in him and she could see it now in his own expression, a change in the intelligence driving his scrutiny from that of a predator's cunning and analytical machine logic to something much broader and more reasoned. Lissa was suddenly glad that they were trying to make amends with each other. Talking her way around this new, more complex version of Grievous wouldn't be quite so easy.

He straightened up finally and pulled his arm free (irritably thinking, how was it he hadn't noticed THAT before? as he did so), and regarded the woman with mingled displeasure and resignation.

"You are still hiding much from me, I believe, but I think it has nothing to do with me. So—you humans shake hands when you exchange a pledge, is that correct?"

"Um, yes. We do, sir," said Lissa, surprised.

"We Kaleesh do so too, almost. We clasp hands."

They compromised by carefully grasping one another's right hands and shook once with grave solemnity, oblivious to the oddness of their surroundings and the strange tableau they presented, the small human woman standing erect and the Kaleesh warlord with his deadly wardroid's body bent back down into a taut crouch to place his face close to her own, the only point of contact between them their mutual gaze and held hands. Grievous searched her eyes again as they mutely exchanged their promises and Lissa was a little abashed to see a hint of sad pleading beneath the fierceness in his own visage. It melted away the last of her scepticism and grudges in a way no threat or reward ever could and her resolve at that moment solidified and became genuine. She swore to herself that she would never disappoint Grievous again, not in any professional sense.

The cyborg still harboured his own doubts. "You are not permitted to lie to me ever again," he emphasized when their little ceremony was over. "Even if what you have to say is devastating to me, I would rather hear it than have you withhold information or try to mislead me."

"I won't let you down, sir," she replied earnestly. "And you have to start taking extra care of yourself. If anything ever happened to you that required work on your brain implants, if you lost an eye, anything like that…I don't know how I could keep Nagas and his team from getting involved. They'd be sure to discover what I've done."

"I know." He uttered one of his rare, harsh laughs. "You had better become an expert in Geonosian cybernetic technology fast, just in case."

"Halfway there already, General. If you could just take it easy for a few more months, I should be able to fudge my way through anything after that."

"Yes, I'm well aware of your talent for obfuscation," he commented, eyeing her, but his sarcasm lacked any real heat. His body drooped further into a more relaxed hunch and he averted his face and let his head start hanging, a visual cue that he'd said and done all he intended to for now and wanted Lissa to get back to work. She took the hint and picked up where she'd left off, turning the water back on to finally rinse off the arm she'd scrubbed to within an inch of its non-life. Grievous stood peacefully, docile once more, eyes closed and back in his own world. Lissa rather envied him his apparent ability to almost instantly compartmentalize everything that happened to him, no matter how profound. She was more of a worrier and a nit-picker, good at hiding things outwardly and moving on, but almost never able to entirely relinquish things that ate at her within.

The agreement she'd just made with Grievous had sobered her and she thought about it all the while she finished cleaning and inspecting him, too subdued to even indulge in scratching his sweet spots, and was still feeling reticent when she afterwards changed his bacta fluid and ran his monthly diagnostic checks. It wasn't until Grievous himself suddenly spoke up as she was closing up his skull plate after examining his brain that she really felt in a mood to converse again.

"Now I know why you suddenly stopped using the laser during my neural checks," he remarked, voice issuing rather comically from the vicinity of his lap, where he was holding his faceplate. Lissa smiled a little as she retrieved the sculpted mask and began reattaching it to his head.

"Well, it was also because you responded so well to the preventative treatments I began using, General," she said. "Your mind just stopped flaring up and there wasn't any necrotic tissue left to remove. I hardly ever find anything to worry about anymore, not even any inflammation about the implants. You've adjusted extremely well to everything, really. Your species must be physically tough and resilient."

"Yes, we heal unusually fast, I believe." Grievous began lifting a hand to rub over his scarred chin, then remembered that he didn't have a chin to rub. "I was always getting beat up and cut up when I was young, but can't recall ever being much bothered by it."

Lissa cocked her head, smiling broadly now. "It's hard to imagine someone like you ever getting beaten up, sir."

"It was my own fault. I'd instigate fights with boys that were much stronger and heavier than me, even though I always knew better. Luckily, they were all good-natured. A sound thrashing was the worst thing I ever suffered."

The cyborg's willingness to confess to arrogance struck Lissa as remarkable as his attempt to reconcile. He really was changing and it appeared so far to be for the better. She felt the sudden urge to test him further.

"General Grievous? That mail reply I brought back for you a couple of days ago…was it good news for you?"

He hesitated this time before answering, reluctant to share what to him was a private matter. But he could also sense that the woman was asking out of genuine concern and he considered concern for himself to be a thing worth encouraging.

"It was positive, yes," he said. "The war hasn't touched my world yet. And my family is fine."

"You're married, aren't you, sir? And you folks are polygamous, is that right, so you'd have several wives?"

"I have six wives."

"Oh!" Her mind cast around wildly for an appropriate response. "Well, you must be—busy—when you're at home."

"I keep myself occupied," he replied dryly.

"How many children?" she asked in a fainter voice.

"Twenty-two."

"Ah. I hope you like being a father."

"I do."

He leaned forward in his chair and stood up abruptly in a single smooth motion accompanied by a little carillon of machine clicks and whirs. Lissa stepped hastily back out of his way.

"Are we done here?" Grievous inquired, looking down at her.

"Oh sure, everything looked good, sir. I'll let you know, of course, if anything out of the ordinary turns up later when I go over your test results."

"Fine, then."

He turned to leave, hesitated again, and said, "I expect we'll be at battle stations approximately thirty hours from now. You can pass that on to your colleagues and prepare yourselves. You might also consider being back here and settled in by tomorrow evening. It'll save you some disruption in your sleep."

"Yes…I'll do that. Thanks for the warning, General!"

"I would have informed Nagas of this tomorrow, but since you were here already…"

He trailed off, gave a curt nod, and continued on and out the door without another word. Lissa watched him go, feeling rather amused. Grievous had seemed almost embarrassed there at the very end, as if he'd just committed a social faux pas by bypassing his precious chain of command. Then again, how anyone with six wives and twenty-two kids could possibly feel social embarrassment of any sort anymore was beyond her. It had to be like living in a zoo!

TBC


	17. A Droplet Of Mercy

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE 

Chapter 17 – A Droplet Of Mercy

The General's advice had been well dealt. Midway through the next night, just as he'd intimated, the fleet went to battle stations. For Lissa, who'd settled in early as suggested and who was lying on her office cot already clad in her full work dress uniform, the only response necessary was to blearily eye her chronometer, roll over, and go back to sleep. She'd be alerted again if Grievous needed her to personally accompany him into battle and was otherwise free to remain on standby.

Lissa wound up waiting for such a call-out for days and then weeks. Grievous had shifted his area of operations to attack the Expansion Region, both for pure terrorism's sake and to conquer ever more resource-rich worlds at the behest of his masters. Many similar planets he'd secured earlier in the war and turned over to one Separatist faction or the other had since already been made over into foundry worlds and come into full production. They now spewed out millions of droids and war machines on a daily basis and inestimable levels of misery for those unfortunates forced to work as slave labourers, and many of the machines were sent straight to Grievous. He now truly commanded the largest droid army ever recorded in the history of the Galaxy and oversaw and directed his ever increasing forces with as much ease and vicious efficiency as ever. His newest campaign was broader and more ambitious than any he'd attempted before and most of it required his constant personal attention from afar, leaving him few occasions to indulge in his more intimate hatreds. It was the only aspect of juggling such huge numbers which he ever regretted.

The fleet remained at battle stations for so long and the fighting was so continuous that the entire period became condensed forever afterwards in Lissa's memory into three separate key occurrences. The first was when the Invisible Hand felt the touch of serious enemy fire for the first time. It was during one of the early space battles in which the entire fleet took part, and Lissa watched the whole horrid thing through the magnificent view port in her office, clutching Trigger for reassurance while her other biodroid, Gregory, stood plastered against the transparisteel in naïve delight, commenting gleefully on the fighting throughout. A huge enemy vessel, dagger-shaped, had taken station nearby and aimed laser blasts at them for close to half an hour. The Invisible Hand's shielding held well enough and auxiliary vessels and fighters had prevented the giant Republic ship from getting any closer, but every blast that did land made the flagship shudder throughout her entire magnificent length and frightened Lissa badly, not for herself but for her droids. The attack forced her to finally confront the possibility of having to abandon ship some day and having to leave them behind. No one besides herself would ever look after a droid in a crisis situation, and if they were blown out into space or were in a place that lost life support, their biomatter brains would die just as surely as those of organic beings.

The second memory that seared itself into her mind was the time she was called up to Grievous's observation deck to take part in one of his staged shows of force while he played at negotiating with his enemies. The difference this time was that the party that was ferried in was human—all its members were human—and one of the men in passing spotted Lissa standing there beside the droids and looked at her in shock. He kept throwing glances at her all the while his more senior spokespeople and Grievous did their song and dance, his face expressing bewilderment, concern, and then outrage and contempt in turn, until Lissa felt shrivelled by every stare and could barely refrain from trying to defend herself by crying out that it wasn't her fault that she was here, she hadn't asked to serve Grievous and she wasn't a Separatist, not really. Near the end of the whole pathetic farce, the man surreptitiously alerted another minor member of his party, and then it was two of them glaring down at the traitorous fellow human in their midst while the others parleyed. It was one of the worst, most shameful experiences of her life, to feel so vilified, and when the visitors left, she averted her eyes, unable to look at them.

Although Grievous thus unwittingly orchestrated one of her worst memories, he also played a key role in generating the last and best one, the third. That one happened during one of the few land battles the cyborg led during the entire long campaign, when Lissa got to finally fulfill her function.

She never even remembered the name of the planet they'd been on later, just that it'd been one more urban battlefield in an increasingly long string of such unpleasant settings. Sunny had been guiding her along yet another crater-strewn street and Grievous had sprinted somewhere up ahead with his elite. A sudden string of rockets had whistled by overhead and impacted in rapid succession close enough to rattle broken glass and coax loosened bricks into falling and make her momentarily duck, then she'd gotten right up and resumed her careful progress with a tired resignation and unconcern that would have been impossible for her just six months ago.

A familiar bellow had shattered her indifference.

"Veleroko!"

It was Grievous, returning and yelling and striding up fast, several MagnaGuards trailing behind. His head was down and thrust forward and he was shaking it violently from side to side. Lissa, alarmed by his actions, fearing the worst, clamped her arms down to steady the kit slung from her shoulders and took to her heels to meet him half-way.

"My eyes—got caught in a blast," he exclaimed as she ran up. "Do something!"

"Of course," she gasped out between pants. The one vulnerable area left on his body breached—a potential disaster! She snagged his head by one sensor plate, steadied his face between her hands, and did a quick visual inspection. His eyes were gushing tears, some of them blood-tinged, but looked intact. "Can you still see? Still focus at all?"

"Yes, but they hurt. It's burning. Hurry!"

He jerked away from her and danced with agonized impatience. Lissa broke out a couple of filled squeeze bottles she'd long ago prepared for just such an emergency and took hold of his head again. "You have to be still now, sir," she told him. "Just for a moment…"

Grievous quit his jittering about long enough to let her tilt his face into position and swiftly flush his eyes, one after the other. The medicated fluid eased his pain almost instantly. He settled down and she repeated her action, washing what she could reach of his face more thoroughly.

"How close were you to this blast?" she asked him while she worked.

"I got knocked down. There was smoke, a lot of smoke. My chem-filter deployed."

"Uh oh, that doesn't sound good. Do you know how long it deployed?"

Grievous paused to consult an internal read-out. "Thirteen seconds," he said.

"Not so bad then. I think you have a bit of a chemical burn here."

Lissa needed to remove Grievous's faceplate and the whole lot moved over to the sheltering wall of a nearby building before proceeding any further. The cyborg's bodyguards established a defensive semi-ring about them both and Sunny held the General's mask. The woman quickly determined that Grievous's face had been peppered with fragments of dirt and debris in addition to suffering brief exposure to some sort of caustic fumes. She found numerous tiny cuts and scrapes in the exposed skin, including several in his eyelids, which explained the bloody tears, yet the eyes themselves still looked fine, the surface of the corneas undamaged and clear. Grievous had been fortunate, Lissa thought. He must've clamped his eyes tightly shut an instant before the blast effects had struck him.

She cleaned his mask in case there was any harmful residue left, then used the last of the eyewash to rinse his whole face one final time before applying a liberal dose of protective wound dressing. The dressing was a lot thicker than the ointment she normally used on Grievous and he predictably balked when she began squeezing gobs of the gooey unguent into the corners of his eyes, by backing up and twisting his head away out of reach exactly as though he were a stubborn horse. Lissa, too concerned for his safety to indulge his temperamental fit or worry about offending him, just grit her teeth and hung on tight, so that he wound up actually dragging her along for a few steps.

"General, please!" she exclaimed. "Just give the medication a minute to liquefy and be absorbed. It'll be fine, I promise. There's no need to fuss so!"

He gave her a dirty look before cutting it out and lowering his head again. The instant she finished up, got his faceplate back on and his vocabulator reconnected, he snapped, "Did you have to put that in my eyes? It's disgusting!"

"If you want proper first aid, then yes, I did have to! It's the best dressing to neutralize chemical burns and protect against further damage over the short term. How do your eyes feel now, by the way?"

He blinked furiously. "Well…fine," he said in a grudging tone.

"Any sort of real pain at all? Irritation when you look around? Blurring?"

Grievous scanned the street adjoining the building and what he could see of the horizon. "No, it's all right. It just feels like they're dry. A little sore."

Lissa nodded. "I couldn't see any injuries off-hand, so that should be strictly due to whatever irritants were in the blast-cloud. You do have some small wounds around your eyes, mostly just skin-deep, and probably a few embedded fragments that'll have to come out."

"I don't have time for that. I have to get back to the battle."

"You can, I'm just saying you'll have to come in for further treatment just as soon as you're done here," Lissa persisted. "Or sooner, if your eyes start troubling you or burning again. You absolutely cannot risk letting this sort of thing turn into any kind of serious injury anymore…you understand what I'm getting at, sir."

Grievous did and his gaze rested on her for a long speculative moment before glancing around at the encircling droids. "I won't take any unnecessary chances," he said. "Will you clear me to go?"

His physician did so, but only after insisting on having a quick cursory look at the rest of him and finding no further significant damage. The big cyborg ran off, back in fighting trim, his elite trotting along with him. Lissa watched him go, her mood a complicated one made up of several emotions. Foremost was her pleasure at having averted a genuine crisis—she'd done her job and served her superior efficiently and well, as she'd promised she would, and Grievous would recover fully thanks to her timely assistance. But there were also darker elements, fear for herself over what could have been among them and a niggling doubt over whether one could really ever morally justify aiding someone like Grievous at all. It was the immediacy of the situation's action and reaction that was bothering her, she supposed. She'd helped preserve a person's vision and the first thing he did afterwards was race away looking for more victims to murder. Whatever happened to pausing to savour one's renewed precious ability to see and appreciating the simple beauty of flowers and rainbows and sunshine and all that other happy crap?

Thinking about Grievous and rainbows in any sort of context jollied Lissa and she snapped right out of her angsty dissolution and got back to doing something useful instead, like getting her medical kit reassembled and back in order. Grievous might have said he wouldn't take chances, but that was like expecting a Neimoidian to pass up a BOGO sale at his favourite retail shop. She had best get herself ready for anything again, just in case.

Both of them, General and physician, lucked in for the remainder of the battle. Nothing more happened to Grievous and Lissa had little else left to do than lag through the rubble and ruin he left behind him for another two hours, by which time the Republicans threw in the towel and surrendered. Lissa shuttled back up to the Invisible Hand and wound down into her own version of operational standby while Grievous remained planet-side to gloat and glory in his latest victory. He eventually showed up in her office as requested just after she'd enjoyed her evening meal, later than Lissa would have ideally liked, but still a prompt response, for Grievous.

The first thing Lissa did was get his faceplate off again and re-examine him with meticulous care under a proper well-lit sterile field and with a surgical magnifier handy. Just as she'd expected, she found several fragments thrown up by the blast Grievous had been caught up in buried in his skin, even a little sliver in his left eyelid, all of which needed careful, gentle easing out. She also had another, much closer look at the surface and functioning of his eyes and confirmed that all was indeed well, although the whites were still somewhat bloodshot with inflammation. Grievous, much better behaved than he had been earlier, lay back in his chair throughout with his arms tucked against his sides and his hands folded over one another and resting between his metal thighs, the picture of submissive tranquility. His evident restored trust boosted Lissa's confidence and she went over and over his eyes and face for a lot longer than she really needed to until she was absolutely sure that she'd found and extracted the last little bit of foreign matter and seen to the tiniest cut, even those that had oozed but a single bead of blood. Grievous stirred when she began smoothing a soothing ointment over his sore skin—the antibiotic cream she normally used, not the gooey dressing—but only to tilt his face her way. His eyes she finished off with the usual drops. He didn't mind those anymore.

"That should do it," she said at last. "The stuff I just applied has good residual effects and should have you healed up within a couple of days. If your eyes still feel in the least irritated tomorrow or your skin's still tender or you develop an especially painful spot, I want you to come straight back in for another look. I'm sure I don't need to remind you of what happened the last time you neglected a wound, General."

"Hmph," Grievous acknowledged, blinking slowly, his eyes still unfocused, almost as if awakening from a nap. Despite the occasional painful twinge when she'd dug something out, he'd been enjoying the rare sensation of being genuinely touched during his examination and treatment.

Lissa next voiced her belief that it would be prudent to change the chemicals within his emergency filter and Grievous agreed with her. He continued to quietly recline while she called down to the Geonosians' shop to inquire about the availability of a refill, then reattached his faceplate. As usual, she cleaned and wiped down the back of the sculpted alien mask, especially about the eye sockets, before positioning it back over his face. She was always doing little extras like that for him, Grievous thought, and now that he'd regained more of his former self, he found himself able to appreciate such things on a far more conscious level. The Geonosians, he knew, would never even consider whether he was comfortable as well as functional. He could recall several early occasions when they'd examined his weeping eyes and just slapped his facial plate back on afterwards with its underside still caked with dried discharge and other grime. It was typical of the sort of attitude he'd come to expect from aliens, a prime excuse for his distrust and dislike of all offworlders. Except for this one, the human woman now hovering over him and critically examining the exterior front of his body while they both waited. She'd treated him as kindly and respectfully as would a fellow Kalee right from the start, and to be extended such by any alien had lately begun to seriously test his prejudice and confuse him.

Gregory soon arrived at the door, noted the General's prone state, and felt safe in flitting past without making a wide detour around him for once. He handed his mistress the packet of chemicals she'd requested, then took up station behind one of her shoulders and hovered there, looking down at Grievous.

"So he almost got blown up, huh?" he remarked, way too cheerfully.

"Nothing quite so dramatic. Just a little bit of smoke inhalation off an explosion," Lissa amended. "You can leave anytime, by the way."

"Oh-h! Can't I stay and watch? I can read you the checklist for the procedure."

"I don't need the checklist, Gregory, thank you. Now scat. This is a private medical session and I can't have you hanging about."

Gregory departed under a cloud of pretentious, pretended distress, whining non-stop. As soon as he was gone, Grievous, who'd been watching the little service droid with steely disapproval throughout, growled, "You need to have that thing's memory wiped."

The sheer vehemence in his tone startled and quite amused Lissa. "You can't mind-wipe a biodroid," she countered mildly. "It would destroy his personality."

"Good. I hate insolent droids."

The woman shrugged, unable to prevent one corner of her mouth from quirking upward. "Then our tastes differ, General. I happen to like droids with a bit of glitchy independence about them."

Grievous eyed her, but said nothing further. He'd rather expected that a person who was herself disobedient on occasion would excuse the same of a bloody droid!

Changing the chemicals within his emergency filter required the dismantling of his frontal neck mechanisms so Lissa had access enough to withdraw his breathing tube. Grievous resigned himself and lay waiting with his head lolling impossibly far back while she did her work, finding the temporary loss of some of his functions less upsetting than usual now that it was just the one familiar person tending to him. She soon had him back together and fully restored to their mutual satisfaction, and then asked him if he still had some time to spare.

"Why?" Grievous asked.

"Because I'd like to run a pulmonary function test on you, if I may, General, just to make sure that your lungs are all right. It's possible that you inhaled a few caustic vapours before your filter deployed."

"There is nothing wrong with my breathing. I feel fine."

"We-ell, the degree of damage I'm thinking of is something you probably wouldn't notice anyway," Lissa said. "Your lungs are quite vulnerable, after all, and I know you've already suffered a couple of incidents which involved them. It'd very much set my mind at ease if you would allow me to administer the test. It doesn't take long and there's no waiting about for results."

Her cajoling words won him over and he nodded his assent. He knew all about his lungs' vulnerability, encased as they were within their own sealed separate container, a pair of joined cylinders equipped with pistoning bottoms attached to the rear of his chest cavity. They were the only organs which never benefited from the healing effects of the doctored bacta fluid freely circulating inside his gut sack.

Lissa called ahead and warned the Invisible Hand's medical staff to clear out for a while, then accompanied the General down to the infirmary. Grievous walked a little behind and beside her, feet clacking lightly on the metal flooring, relaxed and slouched way over so that his head bobbed along just opposite her shoulder, and the woman found herself regarding him with considerable curiosity. It seemed an oddly meek sort of position for him to adopt—truly, he could be a puzzle at times, she thought, with his mercurial swings of mood and shifting behaviours. Oh well, it did make him interesting. Lissa still couldn't understand how Nagas or the other Geonosians could have ever gotten bored with Grievous.

The equipment the human woman needed to administer her test proved easily adaptable for the cyborg's special configuration and she soon had the results she wanted in hand. The moment she began perusing her data, though, her brow crinkled up with worry-lines and she began scowling.

"Shoot. Damn it," Lissa muttered.

Grievous stared over at her gravely. Insofar as subtlety was concerned, she appeared to be suffering a sudden attack of whatever condition permanently afflicted Viceroy Gunray.

"What is wrong?"

"Oh, it's these blasted readings, they're…wait, I'll come and show you."

She transferred the results to her own data padd and pulled out a chair to go sit beside Grievous. He leaned over to look, his expression wary and apprehensive, and Lissa, seeing it and suddenly conscious of her thoughtless lapse, hastened to reassure him. "It's not dangerous, what I found. I'm sure you'll be fine. But your results…here, look…"

Grievous learned that his respiratory organs' capacity and ability to exchange gases was restricted—badly so. It seemed to him a serious finding, but Lissa continued to assure him that it was not as alarming as it appeared.

"If you were still fully organic, then of course it'd be serious," she explained. "You'd have no exercise tolerance and probably feel short of breath much of the time. But given that your heart and lungs are servicing only a fractional amount of the tissue they used to, you could still get by just fine, I'd say, with only half the function you have right now. You just don't have much body left to make demands, and since your droid components do almost all the work of moving you about now, it doesn't much matter whether you're active or not—your oxygen requirements always stay pretty much the same, don't they, sir?"

"Yes. I do override my breathing cycle sometimes to breathe harder, but that…" He trailed off and looked at Lissa doubtfully. "That is emotional, I think. I get excited or angry."

"Exactly. But you've never truly felt short of breath, heaved or wheezed for it…have you?"

"No. Not that I recall." Despite his words, Grievous wasn't entirely convinced, however. His attitude remained uncertain, even became a little growly. "The Geonosians never once tested me the way you just did," he continued. "They never said anything about how poorly my lungs were working or anything about how well any of my organs worked. We never spoke about such things."

"I think they went strictly by your blood's gas levels when it came to evaluating your lung function, and those are actually fine," said Lissa. "You just ought to have better lung capacity than you do. I think you should, if only as a backup in case you get really injured."

Abruptly, she pulled her padd away and stood up. She walked back over to the equipment console she'd been using earlier and started shutting things down. "The blasted thing is," she went on without looking back at Grievous, "because I've never tested you before, I now have no idea if these readings of yours are normal for you and always were, or whether your lungs have been deteriorating all along, or whether you were just hurt when you breathed in the fumes. I think I can treat you and get your functioning back up to a better level, but without some sort of base results to compare with, I couldn't even evaluate the treatment's efficiency or know whether…whether…oh damn! I should have done all this earlier! I should have thought and gotten you in for a full work-up right away as soon as you assigned me to look after you."

Grievous looked at his physician and felt a curious moment of kinship with her. She was rebuking herself the same way he mentally castigated his own self whenever he'd neglected to do something which, in retrospect, he deemed to have been important. "I would have refused," he said to her.

"Perhaps. But I still could have tried nagging you about it even so…as much as I dared to back then, that is."

"Don't bother worrying about it anymore. Keep the results you just gathered as your basis and you can test me again when I come in for my next routine session. Make your comparisons then and afterwards you can decide how to proceed further."

Lissa regarded him with surprise. For Grievous, that response qualified as positively magnanimous. "All right, then that's what we'll do for now," she decided, "as long as you promise to come in earlier if you feel the least bit out of sorts, sir. Oh, and don't forget what I said about your eyes—if anything's still hurting tomorrow, I want to see you back here first thing in the morning."

"Agreed," Grievous said, and on that uncommonly pleasant note, their session concluded.

They parted in the hallway by the infirmary door, Lissa hurrying off to return to her office, the cyborg walking more slowly away in the opposite direction. He was feeling a little strange, calm to the point almost of lassitude, yet also energized and buoyant. Instead of returning to his quarters to look over damage and losses reports, as he'd intended to, he found himself turning off and heading for the ship's cavernous main hangar bay. Some action was what he needed, and a quick jaunt in one of his private starfighters seemed just the ticket. The knowledge that Count Dooku would have been very angry and forbidden his Supreme Commander from even taking off, had he known, made the prospect of a solitary patrol all the more enticing.

Grievous decided to use the Jedi interceptor he'd captured some time ago and warned the flight control people that he'd be out for a while in the Republic vessel to forestall any misidentification mishaps. Idiotic to think that anyone would believe that a single Jedi would even dare come within sniffing distance of his mighty fleet, let alone cruise leisurely through its midst, but there were always a few twits prone to overreacting. He crammed himself into the cockpit, ran through a brief checklist to reacquaint himself with the blended Republic/Separatist-built controls, and lifted up and blasted out of the hangar bay with a flourish. The little ship had been something of an eye-opener for his intelligence people and an equal challenge for his aerospace engineers when Grievous had first brought it aboard. It'd been severely lacking in shielding and some of the usual conventional sensors and controls; apparently, Jedi pilots relied solely on their command of the Force to accomplish much of their navigation and piloting…an interesting discovery. The appropriate Invisible Hand personnel had since managed to modify the interceptor for less esoteric use, but it was still highly vulnerable to offensive fire. It's basic design simply couldn't accommodate a lot of extra weighty shielding that would in any case have destroyed it's outstanding manoeuvrability.

Grievous didn't care that the starfighter he'd chosen was vulnerable. His arrogant confidence in his own piloting ability made up for any lack.

The cyborg had already assigned himself a specific mission before exiting the flight deck and set a course at once for a nearby planetary system. All the battles he'd ever participated in had one certain thing in common—they left behind a degree of wrack and ruin. When his fleet got involved firsthand nowadays that translated into hundreds, sometimes thousands of shipwrecks left adrift after every fight for the scavengers and assigned salvagers to pick through afterwards for days and even long weeks on end. Grievous had recently perused some interesting intelligence which suggested that the earliest unauthorized scavengers that arrived on-scene were often actually covert rescuers or agents recovering valuable data they didn't want falling into Separatist hands. It seemed to the General to be ideal tasking for Jedi that had survived their armies' defeats, given their zealous devotion to the preservation of life and all things good and boring, and he was itching to catch one of them in the act and prove his theorizing right.

His fleet had taken on several star destroyers again during their own latest battle while Grievous had been occupied planet-side and one of the destroyers, disabled and dead in space, had last been reported careening out of control towards a large moon. Such wrecks, once captured by the gravitational force of some chance body, were always doomed. They either picked up speed and plummeted almost straight in or were trapped for a while in a decaying orbit before shredding themselves during one last glorious plunge. Bad news for the salvagers and scavengers, either way. Grievous thought a fatally damaged but still largely intact star destroyer, with its sizable crew, a likely bait for anyone looking to rescue trapped or wounded personnel left behind.

The particular wreck Grievous was searching for had already drifted far away from the battle zone and appeared fully abandoned for the moment. A few flames still licked sporadically out of some of the damaged areas; the ship either still possessed some life support or it was just some flammable from a ruptured line or tank. Grievous flew his fighter in close and up past the vessel's massive stern…impressive. One of the Republic's Venator-class destroyers, about a match for his own flagship, Invisible Hand, in size, he recognized. There were supposed to be even larger star destroyers now in service, but Grievous hadn't encountered any yet himself. He topped the wreck's back end, cruised past one of the bridge towers, and there, way ahead, rising up off the surface of the bow was a Jedi interceptor.

A swell of heat swept through Grievous, impossibly so, yet it registered that way nonetheless—the sight of the other little fighter made him feel that smug and full of himself. The cyborg throttled back and held his bearing. No need to rush or change his course, he was just a friendly colleague, idling in to help. He thumbed up the cover on the fire control button, eyes glittering with malicious glee, hunching forward in anticipation. Just a wee bit closer and Mister Jedi was going to receive a nice just reward for his altruistic stupidity, a big fat dose of blaster fire right up his—

The other interceptor abruptly spun about and shot off at high speed.

Grievous, startled, huffed with surprise and dropped his pretence at once. Possible reasons for his blown cover flickered through his mind as he cranked his own ship up as fast as it could go and gave chase—had the modifications altered something in his vessel's normal expected signature? was there some protocol of greeting which he'd failed to employ? The Jedi fled, his long lead increasing. Grievous redlined his engine and wished, not for the first time, that he still had teeth to grind together in his anxious frustration. Even though the cyborg's engineers had done their best, the instrumentation they'd installed had added many kilos of weight, and the other starfighter was simply lighter and faster. If the Jedi was aiming for his hyperdrive booster ring, there was a good chance that he was going to reach and utilize it to escape into hyperspace before the General could catch him.

But it wasn't a booster ring that the Jedi wanted after all, it was one of the nearby planets, a small one, shimmering and blue with extensive seas. Grievous, far back by now, became puzzled by his enemy's decision as he rode the lock he had on the other vessel all the way down into the little world's atmosphere and through a scattering of fair-weather cumulus cloud. There was very little land for his foe to hide on, just a couple of archipelagos, and the Jedi didn't even try to conceal his exhaust trail or evade his pursuer, he simply angled straight in towards one of the larger, more isolated islands. Grievous automatically evaluated the terrain he was about to descend onto: a narrow band of level land encircling an ancient, splintering volcanic plug, the vegetation tropical and rampant, the seashores sandy and shifting. It looked a little like an island preserve he'd once hunted on back on his own homeworld, Kalee. That expedition had been very successful, Grievous recalled with grim pleasure. Hopefully, this one would yield similar results.

His happy anticipation vanished and morphed into suspicion the instant his sensors detected worked metals on the isle. A trap! Or was it? Grievous cautiously drew closer and overflew the periphery of what his instruments had picked up, a sort of compound of buildings clustered together beside a broad cove. The whole area looked, even from the air, long neglected and deserted. He could find no evidence of any artificial energy sources aside from the faint traces left by the passage of the Jedi's interceptor, nor could he find the starfighter itself, although he was absolutely certain that it had set down somewhere amidst the ruins. Grievous huffed again, this time with a grudging mix of respect and disdain. The Jedi might have been able to cleverly mask his vessel somehow, but it would only prolong the inevitable, really.

The General landed his own interceptor close to the largest building, a once-luxurious, multi-floored residence that was falling into rubble. Stone-slab terraces and lavish gardens that had long since run wild or been overgrown still abutted the ruin and a shaped depression of almost bare sand hinted at a drifted-in swimming pool. Curiously, the two walls of the house that were still intact bore evidence of having been under heavy weapons fire, which didn't make much sense to Grievous. It seemed a target unworthy of attracting such an intense and specific attack.

Several long, low outbuildings nearby were in even worse shape than the main residence. Their walls, metal-framed, still stood, but the roofs had caved in, obliterating any hint of what had been going on within or any hope of concealing a starfighter. Grievous went on, casing the sandy ground for fresh tracks and occasionally halting to sweep his immediate surroundings, trusting in his enhancements and predator's instincts to warn him should the Jedi draw near. A part of him registered that the area he was reconnoitring was still lovely despite the decaying remnants of man-made intrusion and that the sparkling turquoise ocean and the sweet air and the sunny green sky would have no doubt translated into tropical paradise for most people, but that part had no say anymore. The cyborg had gone into hunting mode, and the only thing about the air that interested him at that moment was that it was too hot, blood-heat hot, which was likely to foul up his infrared vision.

A narrow river flowing out to sea bordered one side of the cove and compound. Grievous heard the pound of falling water coming from upstream, and when he investigated, was mildly stunned to find a poured plastercrete dam with a small reservoir backed up behind it and maintenance sheds housing corroding old generating equipment. Hydroelectricity, here, for this one isolated estate? Grievous stood baffled by the incongruity of it all. The compound's very existence argued for an extravagant outlay of funding, technology and effort made at some time in the past. He couldn't understand why the same people had gone to such lengths to create the means to collect such a primitive source of power.

He skirted the end of the dam, too suspicious to step onto the structure itself, and in so doing, stumbled across exactly what he'd been searching for, a faint scuffed footprint that was much larger than any he'd noted already. Grievous hunkered down eagerly. The specifics of the track were blurred—the ground was dry and hard—but he could tell that it'd been made by something heavy moving at speed and that they'd been clawed and walked on broad, full soles. The cyborg half-rose into a crouching pose and swiftly back-tracked, head down, until he'd found a patch of softer soil and several more prints. Their details confirmed that the maker of the tracks was bipedal and had been running. Grievous knew that the species of Jedi who could pilot their trademark interceptors were generally restricted to those that were roughly human-like in size and conformation, and these footprints, he believed, belonged to someone who fell within those parameters. As for the odds that a wild creature of humanoid form had just run by here within the past hour…no, astronomical. Grievous straightened up. For a moment he hesitated, debating whether he should take the precaution of finding and disabling the Jedi's starfighter first, but the lure of the hunt was too strong for him and his blood-lust was up. He whirled about and fixated on his prey instead.

The tracks suggested that the Jedi had crossed the top of the dam. Grievous followed, guarded and tense, his vigilance peaking when he hopped up to use the catwalk that spanned the spillway. Nothing unusual happened, and when he reached the other side, he easily found more of the same broad footprints. Whoever it was, was still moving fast. Grievous stepped up his own pace, encouraged.

The trail angled away through thickets of giant-leaved shrubs and a belt of fringing forest and on into the interior of the island. The jungle closed in over Grievous. He walked beneath old growth now, skirting enormous tree trunks, the dense latticework of the jungle canopy spreading far above him. The soft duff and litter on the open ground readily showed the marks of disturbance and Grievous tracked his prey as easily as would a hound, using his exquisite vision alone, and shifted into his rapid running walk. He sped along through the pristine wild, leg and hip joints churning and whirring, the technological marvel that was his body looking bizarrely out of place.

The terrain began to slope upward and quickly steepened. Grievous could see obvious claw-digs, a long gouge once, where the Jedi had slipped. Then came another zone of scrub and riotous low growth, and the soil petered away into meagre patches between the bare-rock slabs and boulders of a hillside. The cyborg, excited, sensing imminent confrontation, dropped to all fours to continue scrambling upward. He could hear falling water again, a roar this time, and the vegetation was getting wet, dripping almost.

Grievous broke out of the forest directly onto the lip of a deep gorge. Great ramparts of stone reared up before him, blotting out half the sky, and a spectacular waterfall, hundreds of meters high, plunged down one of the fissured faces and into a deep blue pool. The sight was so impressive that even Grievous was moved; he stood for a long moment immersed in simple awe before reverting back into cool assessment. The instant he did so, he crouched, preparing for action, and a hand went to one of the lightsabers attached to his waist. The noise and the mists drifting up made it harder for him to keep watch and he still had the sense that his chase was almost over.

A narrow game trail bordered the top of the steep cliffs overlooking the pool and gorge. Grievous stalked along, searching the patches of thin soil and low, clinging vegetation edging the path for spoor, then reversed his direction. The mists seemed to get thicker the further he went away from the waterfall. He peered down and noted the slow boil of curious up-swells distorting the water surface just before the entrance to the gorge. Steam appeared to be rising off the up-swells. Hot springs? He utilized one of his vision's thermal options…no, the water roiling up was cold. There must've been an aquifer beneath him, disgorging its contents under pressure, Grievous thought, or perhaps it was just a quirk of geology funnelling a flow of chilled water from deep underground. Whatever its source, the amounts gushing up had to be substantial. Within the constrictive channel below, thick clouds of fog positively billowed up, sometimes rising high enough to envelope him as he strode on, other times burning off under the hot noon sun before it could escape the gorge.

During one of the foggy intervals, a spidery dark apparition extending out over the chasm loomed out of the mist. It was a cable bridge, meant for foot traffic alone, ancient enough in design, but constructed out of materials too durable and sophisticated to have been strung by anyone but the mysterious compound dwellers. Grievous felt one of the thick wires slung at chest height for use as a hand railing. The metal still seemed perfectly sound, the short plastiform planks laid as footing were filthy and old, yet still intact. A good scenic outlook from which to see the waterfall and rapids below and the reservoir they fed, Grievous guessed, at least whenever weather conditions and the tricky mists cooperated. His duranium fingers on the cable railing gripped, testing the bundled wires again. He leaned down a little, scanning the wet surface of the planking, and saw mars in the condensation beading and several smudges of dirt spaced a certain equal distance apart. The one separating typical humanoid footfalls at a walk, say.

Grievous jerked his head back up. He started forward.

The instant Grievous set a foot on the bridge, he knew it was unsafe. It had nothing to do with the structure's engineering or any lack thereof. He simply knew that if he tried to cross that he would never reach the other side. Slowly, he withdrew his forward foot off the planks and backed away a few steps. He went very still and locked his body and allowed only his head to continue moving, swivelling it meticulously from side to side, every sense cranked up for maximum detection and focused on the area at the other end of the bridge.

When he switched over to his infrared vision, a vague smudge of light punctuated by two much brighter small discs appeared against a darker background and hovered briefly before seeming to wink out. Grievous waited, concentrating, and the small glow reappeared, just for an instant, then vanished again. A thin thread of white-hot rage began twining its way up his artificial spine. He turned off all his enhancements and freed his body and growled, a low, guttural rumble meant only for himself.

"Give it up, Jedi!" he called out with harsh assurance. "I know you're there!"

Swirls of dense mist still blanketed the air above the gorge. He could see and hear nothing at all out of the ordinary at first. Then a distant coil of fog flashed green and the bridge shuddered and the far end of it abruptly came loose. The entire flexible boardwalk and its cable railings swung downward in a smooth arc. It smacked against the cliff face beneath Grievous's feet, bounced and undulated a few times, and then just hung, still whole and now utterly useless.

The fitful mists, fanned by the falling structure, twisted and wafted about and suddenly evaporated away into nothingness, and a grey-brown figure was revealed standing upon the far edge of the gorge, somebody big and broad through the chest, his limbs draped with hanging fur. His long face, projecting out from beneath a hood, was covered with much shorter, sleeker hair than what coated his body and his slitted eyes were encircled with dark naked skin. The alien had already deactivated his lightsaber and hung its hilt in its usual position on the waistband of his skirt.

Grievous swore. "You again!"

The Whiphid Jedi he'd tried to kill twice before inclined his head. "General Grievous," he acknowledged, his voice raised to make himself heard over the thundering falls.

The cyborg could not believe it. Bad enough to be confronted with this living evidence of one of his few failures, but to do so under circumstances seemingly designed to keep them apart! Grievous clamped his toes tight and leaned forward out over the gorge as far as he dared, estimating the distance. He might have been able to leap across given a running start, but to jump cold off the narrow edge…no, he'd never make it. His eyes narrowed and he fired a furious glower over at the shaggy Jedi.

"What is your name?" Grievous demanded.

"K'kruhk," the other man replied. "My name is K'kruhk."

"Well, Jedi K'kruhk, as I recall, our last encounter was cut short and unresolved. Would you care to continue that duel now? Meet with me on the beach so we can finally end this as warriors should?"

"I—no, I…fear I must respectfully decline your challenge," K'kruhk said. His words were still loud, but otherwise entirely mild and reasonable, almost apologetic. "I have no wish to fight you, General, even now. I would much rather extend a hand in friendship than extend it holding a lightsaber."

"And I would much rather you extended your neck, to make it that much easier for me to kill you," Grievous shot back angrily. "You owe me your head, K'kruhk. Twice over!"

"I know. Yet it seems that fate demands that I retain it. I think that you may also be a man who believes in fate, General. Will you not take this as a sign that we should be talking instead? Put aside your quarrel with my Order for once and agree to a parley in place of more mindless bloodshed?"

Grievous responded with another savage glare. He was fast approaching that violent, obsessive, engineered state in which nothing else mattered to him save getting at and rending the creature before him limb from limb, and had already begun to pace the dangerous edge of the gorge as best he could in his frustration. The big talons on his feet crunched through the thin soil on the trail and into the rock beneath with every step. His narrow head snaked out before him, shifting from side to side to keep his gaze fixed on his prey as he strode back and forth.

"I thought you already had a coward who specialized in negotiation, that human, Kenobi," Grievous grated out. "Summon him and perhaps I'd be willing to listen to some of your prattle before killing you both. I'd even agree to fight you together—two on one, K'kruhk, someone for you to hide behind for an extra minute of life!"

The bulky figure of the Whiphid seemed to hunch in on itself. The curved downface lowered, its expression turning strangely sad, yet he said nothing in return. His opponent's refusal to rise to the insults infuriated Grievous all the more. His frenetic pacing grew almost careless, one foot slipping once as he spun about, sending chunks of stone and earth tumbling, and his bulging eyes blazed with abnormal, burning intensity. K'kruhk watched it all with somber concern, the look on his own face becoming more troubled.

A stray tactical concern shot through the cyborg's mind, penetrating his murderous frenzy. "Jedi!" he demanded again, hoarsely. "When I first approached you, in space, how did you know? How could you tell it was me in the interceptor?"

K'kruhk took his time before answering. "You are steeped in death and hatred, General," he said at last after a very long pause. "Your aura reeks of it and of the blood you've shed. I pity you."

"What?" Grievous snapped back. "What did you just say to me?" To add to his outrage, the thick mists in the gorge billowed up again at that moment, swiftly obliterating the alien form once more. The cyborg could no longer see K'kruhk at all. "Jedi! Answer me!" he cried.

The reply, when it finally came, sounded much fainter and already far away. "Goodbye, General," the low voice drifted over. "You'll forgive me for saying that I hope we don't meet again."

Grievous uttered a hideous curdled snarl in response and launched himself out across the void without thinking. It was a stupendous leap, a magnificent leap, and just as he'd estimated, it fell several meters short of his intended target. He plummeted into the gorge with his hands and feet outstretched before him, ready to seize and grab, but the cliff face streaming past was very steep and he fell a long way down before coming into contact with it. The instant he did so, he began scrabbling and clawing with furious strength, digging long scores and gouges into the friable stone until he'd managed to arrest his plunge well enough to drive his talons home and hold fast. He finally jolted to a halt so close to the bottom that flung spray off the white-water boiling through the narrow channel wet him down almost at once as thoroughly as though he'd fallen in. The near dousing on top of his miss did nothing to improve his temper.

Getting back up, out of the gorge, proved no problem. His wild efforts had carved fresh handholds down half the cliff face. He scrambled up rapidly, propelled chiefly by powerful thrusts from his long legs, pulling hard with his hands when he had to, all of it accompanied by the non-stop roar of the falls and the rapids and his own angry grunts and growls. By the time he reached the top of the gorge, he found the Jedi long gone, of course. The Whiphid's tracks led Grievous downhill this time, straight through the jungle back towards the ruined mansion, and for a few moments he thought K'kruhk might have taken shelter in the crumbling structure to regroup, but his faint hope of trapping the Jedi was dashed as soon as the trail then took a sudden turn away from the compound. The tracks intersected a broad band of younger growth, the trees too small to form a light-omitting lofty canopy yet, and turned again, and Grievous realized that he was now following a long overgrown dirt road. He pushed faster through the dense clumps of undergrowth, no longer needing to see any footprints to know where he needed to go.

An even brighter spot opened up and Grievous stepped out into a clearing. Most of it was taken up by a single smallish domelike building that was still surprisingly intact. The cyborg walked around it, his manner now more cautious, one lightsaber already in hand though still deactivated. The structure appeared to be made of solid metal sheeting, something more resistant to decay than all the other outbuildings he'd seen so far. And when he crept around the final corner and saw the front of it…

A hangar. The bay door was wide open and it was empty within. Grievous snorted with disgust, reattached his weapon to his waist, and stalked inside. Dead, dried vegetation had blown inside and the smooth floor, made of more sheeting, plastiform this time, was so dirty that he could clearly see the pad marks where the Jedi's interceptor had sat and all the details of how K'kruhk had moved around, most of the prints spaced widely apart or smudged in his hurry to exit and then reboard his ship. Grievous went outside again and soon found evidence of how the Jedi had manoeuvred his interceptor down and into hiding as well in some broken branches on the surrounding trees and clear-blasted circles in the ground litter. The Whiphid had known about this secret hideaway all along and was by now so long gone that he'd no doubt already reached his hyperdrive booster ring and made use of it to escape again. Blast the wretched creature! He had to be getting some divine help, was meant to survive for some unfathomable reason mere mortals such as himself couldn't possibly comprehend, Grievous thought—it was the only explanation he could come up with for how any one individual could survive three close encounters with him! The cyborg scuffed around the front of the derelict hangar, kicking at the ground and muttering and grumbling to himself. Maybe K'kruhk was just lucky. Some people were like that, surviving one mishap after another and beating the odds through sheer fortuitous circumstance. If so, he had to be the luckiest damn Jedi in the whole Jedi Order, the luckiest one ever in the Order's entire squalid history!

Grievous calmed down in time and looked the building over more carefully before he left. Solid metal construction made for durability, but also concealment of private spaceship use…what could possibly have been going on to necessitate such things, he wondered. The intriguing possibilities aroused his curiosity as he wound his way along the overgrown road, following it back towards the beach. Grievous had once been very fond of exploring. As a youth, he'd often felt tugged by wanderlust and spent much of his free time roaming the wilds about his family's holdings, and it was only the even greater excitement of training with his clan's militia and the enticement of a promising military career which had really kept him home towards the end. Now, as he kept striding along, stimulated by the unfamiliar jungle and the chase he'd just experienced and the puzzle of the abandoned alien compound, a little of his old adventurous bent returned and began overriding even his disappointment over losing the Jedi.

The road abruptly petered out at the back edge of the once-cleared zone about the rotting mansion, just as Grievous expected it would. He checked the building out again, much more slowly and thoroughly than he had the first time, and came away with no more answers than he'd had before. All he could determine for sure was that it had once been an incredibly opulent residence that had been pounded into ruins by some sort of heavy ammunition—aerial missile fire, he guessed, from the positioning of the damage on the two remaining standing walls. Grievous walked on, past his parked interceptor, and returned to the dam he'd crossed earlier. He remembered glimpsing an odd break a short way down the near shoreline of the reservoir lake when he'd been pursuing K'kruhk…ah yes, there it was, an incongruous little sand beach set right where such a thing had no business existing. Another artificially constructed feature left behind, he thought, and a few minutes of splashing along the shore and pushing his sleek body through thick reed beds and other clustered water plants brought him into position to confirm it—there were even a few pilings left, from a long-gone dock. People had boated here once and probably fished and gone swimming. They still could have. The jungle and aquatic vegetation was encroaching hard, but hadn't yet completely reclaimed the small clearing with its deep sandy base, and it was still a pleasant place, bright and open to the sunshine, yet protected and private.

Grievous cruised the perimeter of the little beach and found, in quick succession, the remnants of the old walkway once used by the compound residents to access the area and then another well-used game trail. The local fauna coming down to water? It seemed likely. The sand was peppered with tracks, all relatively small, most showing evidence of cushioning pads and multiple clawed toes. A concentration of prints under one of the bordering trees caught his attention and he found a scattering of fish-like skeletons lying about, most almost intact with decaying heads and tails still attached…very strange… He squatted down on his hocks to examine the remains more closely, metal legs folding up neatly, his expression reflecting much of the same lively intensity and enthusiasm he brought to his Jedi-hunting, although for once devoid of the usual accompanying rage and hatred. Small animals had chewed the bones here and there, but there was enough remaining for Grievous to find several too-straight edges to the residual flesh about the heads and spines. Someone had cut the meat away, not torn or bitten it off.

Another wordless exclamation of surprise escaped him. So—people did still make use of the island, although whether they'd just been visitors roughing it for an afternoon or were resident aboriginals of some intelligence was hard to determine from the meagre evidence he'd uncovered. Grievous combed through the sand beneath the skeletons with his fingers without turning up anything new. Another mystery to ponder over… He stood up and went back to the edge of the water, wading in a few steps. Grievous had always enjoyed fishing, both for leisure purposes and as a means to augment feeding himself and his family, and he found himself wondering whether the reservoir had been stocked and what the skeletal remains had looked like in life. Fish were pretty much fish throughout the galaxy. They were one of those lower, water-living life forms which evolution always seemed to nudge along into the same basic efficient design in the end.

But why was he standing there speculating when he lived in a body that could let him see for himself? He could breathe underwater, Grievous suddenly remembered! The possibility, once considered, proved impossible to resist. Impulsively, he waded further in.

A click as the rebreather slid into place, a gasp and a sharp cough, and his transition was complete. Grievous stepped carefully so as not to stir up the sediment underfoot until his head was covered by a good meter of water and then just stood, still and quiet. The area about him and around the old dock was clear and open. Further out, tall strands of some water weed with long fronds swayed in the slight current, and on either side of him, where the sandy bottom changed over into proper soil, thick masses of smaller plants, some suspended and rootless, grew right up to the shoreline. If there were fish to be seen, fish he'd no doubt just frightened into hiding, they'd soon reappear out of those aquatic jungles.

In the meantime, with no Jedi and no fighting this time to distract him, he could concentrate on the pure sensations of being underwater. The dense ambiance he'd plunged into was one ruled by scent and sound rather than vision. Even though the water was clean and well-lit, Grievous found that he could not see very well, at least not with his usual detailed razor-sharpness, but that he could hear his own heartbeat and the rhythmic draw of this lungs with remarkable clarity. With the base component of his audio sense turned up, he could additionally hear the distant thrum of the falls and rapids, even the slap of wind-driven waves on the side of the dam and on the far shore. It all seemed very alien to him, a much restricted, simpler world than the one he was accustomed to, yet its very simplicity appealed to him also.

The dance of the sunshine, broken into scintillating yellow-green rays by the ripples on the surface of the water, became almost hypnotic. Left without any cues to trigger his behaviours, as far removed from his normal surroundings as it was possible for him to be, all of Grievous's malice and anger, his gnawing programmed drives and constant tension began to fade. They subsided into faint ignorable whispers, overcome by a measure of rare peace. He slipped into the light torpor that was as close to sleep as his tortured brain could approximate and stood entranced.

When Grievous came to, there were tiny minnows playing about his head and nibbling at his vocabulator, and the sunrays were slanting into the water at a steep angle. And he saw his fish, whole schools of them cruising the shoreline and the old pilings of the dock, and out in the deeper waters, amidst the waving water weeds, lurked the dark spindle shapes of larger, solitary predators. Their fins weren't arranged quite right and the big ones had what looked disconcertingly like atrophied limbs hanging down beneath their gill covers, but they were recognisable as fish even so, and fled and hid with typical piscine caution the instant Grievous moved. They'd been nice, plump fish too. He imagined they made for good eating.

Satisfied, Grievous turned and made for the shore. When his head broke the surface, he surprised two creatures that were crouching over his tracks on the beach, shocking them into immobility.

Grievous regarded them with equal astonishment. Staring back were two leggy little bipeds scarcely bigger than small children, one about two-thirds the size of the other, both long-limbed and lean, their wide-open eyes gleaming like gold coins out of dark brown snouted faces as they gawked at him. Their smooth-skinned bodies were hairless and naked aside from belts supporting pouches made of worked hides slung about their waists and the larger one also carried a wrapped bundle of something long on its back. They looked remarkably similar to reconstructions of ancestral Kaleesh which Grievous had seen in museums, and their sentience, though primitive, was unmistakable, their terror equally so.

The cyborg knew by instinct how to calm the fears of potential prey and gazed away from the two creatures as if he'd lost interest in them. He turned and splashed ashore four or five meters to one side of them, then walked straight ahead with exaggerated nonchalance, still feigning indifference, keeping his face tilted just far enough to enable him to watch the natives out of the corner of one eye. They held their place, still frozen and taut, with only their own eyes moving as they slowly, fearfully, marked him. An adult teaching a juvenile, Grievous observed with some wistfulness as he went by. What they must have made of his tracks was impossible to guess at.

The instant that a safe distance separated the cyborg and the little aliens, they sprang up and bolted away into the undergrowth. Grievous had been expecting them to behave so and didn't bother looking back, he just found the old pathway back to the ruined compound and kept walking along, still sauntering. His interlude with the fish and the encounter with the aboriginals had refreshed him greatly. He felt relaxed and happier than he had in a long time, and the only thing left to mar his peace were his eyes, which had begun to feel gritty and sore again—maybe immersing himself so soon after injuring them hadn't been such a great idea after all. Then he realized that he now had an excuse to visit his physician for more attention and a reapplication of that soothing medication and brightened again. He'd just tell Lissa that he'd spent some time in the water while pursuing a Jedi. It was honest enough and would forestall her aiming one of her disapproving frowns at him. He also decided, on the spot, that the Jedi he'd been chasing, K'kruhk, must've been meant to live and had been benefiting from divine intervention all along. It was the only interpretation which his enormous pride would allow.

Grievous retrieved his interceptor and flew back to his flagship. He disembarked at about the same time that the two aboriginals he'd met finished racing home and began breathlessly relating to their tribe-mates how the White Death had come out of the god-made lake and passed them by.

TBC


	18. Raiders Of The Opportune Moment

Whew! To paraphrase the Ian Malcolm character in the Jurassic Park movie, now that is one big pile of verbal diarrhoea set down in print! A massive chapter coming up and I'm not sure how that happened. I wrote the intro and last scenes first and thought the middle part wouldn't need too much fleshing out at all, but it just kept growing and growing (or spewing, more like). Blame the two chief characters involved. They're just way too much fun to write together!

Note for techno-fiends: A specific ship will be referenced about midway through this chapter. It's one that's been added to Star Wars canon quite recently in order to preserve consistency, but as far as I know, there is no official description of what it actually looks like, just a good deal of assumption. My version of it's going to run counter to the usual assumption a bit for some pure personal preference's sake which has to do with appearance, so if its description here seems a little 'off', well, now you know why…

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 18 – Raiders Of The Opportune Moment

Grievous got to enjoy his peaceful interlude for only a few days more. Count Dooku summoned him on short notice to another conference and Grievous was forced to leave it up to his battle staff officers to finish overseeing his fleet's latest re-supply run. He was even more irked when he discovered that the meeting was being held at one of the Sith Lord's own family holdings, a lavish estate located on a private asteroid, and that much of the time scheduled involved social events rather than anything he personally deemed worthwhile or important. There was no getting out of the social functions, either. Dooku made it crystal clear upon the cyborg's arrival that he was expected to attend everything and make himself available to everyone in his role as the deputy leader of the Separatist Council.

As always, fulfilling his professional obligations and providing information about anything to do with the ongoing war and the droid armies he commanded was so easy for Grievous that he could have done it while half-asleep, but the requisite socializing this time came harder than ever. He'd become more sensitive to the subtleties of the personalities and the political picture swirling around him. All of the obnoxious dealing and the petty rivalries and the lies and the greed, it all irritated him beyond belief much worse than before. His feelings towards Dooku himself were also evolving—his occasional hatred for the man had now darkened and grown into an almost constant bitter animosity seasoned by spite and scorn. Grievous's self-control was most sorely tested the night Count Dooku hosted a soiree in the opulent palace he tried to pass off as just one of his 'rustic little vacation homes'. The General knew that his own Kaleesh people would have regarded this particular 'rustic' edifice as nothing short of a magnificent temple, a grand accomplishment worthy of reflecting the devotion of his entire world's population. Hearing his superior refer to his palace as being simple in any aspect was enough to alone infuriate, embarrass and depress Grievous in turn as the long evening went by.

More than just the Council members were attending on this occasion. This latest conference, Grievous learned, had been set up in part as a welcome and get-together for the more recent CIS signatories, and he had many new faces and names to memorize; he spent the first hour of the party simply standing by Dooku's side, being introduced over and over. None of the new representatives impressed him in the least. At most he would afford them a nod and a cold stare and that, coupled with his intimidating reared-up stance and his frightening and eerie machine body draped in its ivory and crimson shroud of a cape, was always enough to redirect any potential fawning Dooku's way. His reputation also helped to protect him. Everyone in the expansive rooms knew of his deeds and the sorts of atrocities he'd committed by now and that in itself rattled many of the people who looked up into his bone-white mask of a face. It was much easier to look at the human's face. The Count was always so courteous and soft-spoken, his eyes kind, his manner welcoming and patient—why, it seemed sometimes that it took but a single glance for him to know all about one's needs and problems, he was just so understanding. But that cruel, half-machine, glowering creature at his side—brrr! no thank you! One would sooner get more empathy from a stone than out of the likes of him! And so, one after the other, the people who met the Confederacy's Supreme Commander made polite noises, inwardly shuddered, and afterwards let him be, and Grievous was able to hang onto his temper despite the aggravation even those brief contacts dealt him.

Dooku, who was by contrast quite in his element and entirely at ease, eventually needed to pursue more intense and private conversations with some of the individuals hovering like satellites about him, and released Grievous with a nod of his own. The cyborg lowered his head and stalked off at once without acknowledgement. He took up his own station on the periphery of the milling throng of party-goers and then just stood and watched. The Geonosian delegates were also standing not far away along with several other aliens, and Grievous could tell just by the body language of their leader, Archduke Poggle the Lesser, that some sort of sales pitch was in progress, even though Poggle's back was turned. One of the aliens being addressed by the Archduke looked past him at Grievous and must've said something—everyone turned around then to look at the cyborg. Poggle thrust his chest out, stroked his luxurious long wattles and gestured towards Grievous while fondly regarding him and talking on. There was nothing at all friendly about his expression. He was just bragging up the points of some walking product. Disgusted, Grievous strode off and found a new spot where the Geos could no longer see him.

One of the military officers attending the function, a Koorivarian admiral, came up to him. The cyborg angrily swung about to confront him, but all the man wanted was to ask his advice about utilizing the new upgraded Trade Federation battle droids that were being issued. Grievous sleeked his raw upright nerves and answered his question, then a few more. He loathed the Koorivarians' Corporate Alliance and thought their Magistrate, Passel Argente, a particularly odious individual, but he did have some grudging respect for their own standing military—Koorivarians tended to be stolid, albeit unimaginative fighters who invariably did exactly as they were told, and obedience did make up for a lot of failings in the cyborg's book. When the Admiral was done, he thanked Grievous politely before leaving. Grievous watched him walk away, and for a few seconds the frustrated resentment ever evident in his eyes retreated and gave way to a peculiar yearning, which softened his expression remarkably. Back when he'd been a flesh and blood warlord, Grievous had been famous for his bold solitary raids during which he'd several times escaped death by a hair's breath, but for the most part he'd always been surrounded by a cadre of peers and his own special bodyguards, many of whom had been friends to him. He was beginning to miss that camaraderie and almost wished that the Admiral had stayed to talk with him just a little longer. Almost.

In looking after the Admiral, Grievous's gaze happened to fall upon Viceroy Nute Gunray, who was, as usual, whining about his problems to a small clique of fellow diplomats. Instantly, the cyborg's festering anger re-emerged and he fixed his bête noir with a hard stony glare. His sensor plates tilted rearward. If he'd had ears, he would have plastered them flat back against his skull.

Gunray actually had reason to be upset. One of the Trade Federation's most valuable new resource planets had been attacked and retaken by the Galactic Republicans only a week ago. The Viceroy had already taken his concerns to Dooku directly, but all the Count had offered in return were his condolences and his sad observation that sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the good of the whole. Gunray hadn't taken Dooku's reassurances well at all. In his opinion, his people had already sacrificed far more than their share and his natural greed was such that he resented the loss of every cubic meter of Trade Federation-held territory and the seizure of even the tiniest bauble or scrap. All he could do in lieu of Dooku's refusal to better help protect Neimoidian interests was to bitterly mourn and complain to anyone who would listen, just as he was doing now. Unfortunately, such tirades, though satisfying for Gunray, soon exhausted said listeners. It wasn't long before the Viceroy's latest audience had made their excuses and snuck off, leaving Gunray to wallow in his pity party all alone.

Well, not entirely alone. When he looked around for more potential wangst victims, Gunray saw the abomination standing quite close behind him, staring at him with those horrid yellow burning eyes.

"General Grievous," Gunray exclaimed, with the same emotion he might have shown upon finding an unpleasant stain on his sleeve.

"Viceroy," Grievous rumbled, his own tone no less unfriendly.

The Neimoidian leader was desperate enough to think that the abomination might feel a smidgeon of concern for his loss. He said, "Planet Verloren was taken from us, General. All that productivity…it was one of our best. A thousand gross tonnes of ore per hour gone, millions of workers, billions of—"

"Yes, I know all that. I made mention of Verloren during my briefing, as you would have noted had you been paying the slightest amount of attention."

The cyborg's rudeness and uncharitable sarcasm instantly roused Gunray's ready indignation. He'd been wary of antagonizing Grievous ever since their disastrous first meeting back on Geonosis, but this—this!—was too much. He drew himself up as tall as he could within his voluminous robes, rubbery lips quivering with that odd mingling of hurt, disdain, and passive-aggressiveness which only a Neimoidian could express to perfection.

"Those resources were being put to use to raise monies to fund this war," he shot back. "They funded your exploits, General, built ships and droids for you to waste, yes, waste, that is exactly what you have been doing, wasting them. My officers tell me that is what you do—you, who should appreciate more than anyone the technology my money buys!"

"Are you questioning my tactics, Viceroy?" Quite the opposite of Gunray, Grievous had begun sinking down into his predator's crouch, coiling up his power. He sidled a step closer, two steps closer to the irate alien diplomat. "I should very much like to know if that is what you are doing," he added in a much quieter, more dangerous voice.

Gunray was feeling too offended to heed the warning signs. "Why shouldn't I question them?" he pressed on recklessly. "It's only because of my people's generosity that you are alive at all! You take and take and take from us and when we ask one thing of you, one little favour, you refuse because you have 'other concerns'."

"It is Count Dooku who sets the overall strategy. In this matter, I agreed."

"Oh, so you hide behind your master's skirts now! You could have spoken up. Convinced him otherwise."

"Are you deaf? I just said that I concurred with his decision!"

"But you owe me," Gunray persisted. "I paid for that body you wear. And those MagnaGuards, I paid for those—"

"Stop talking to me about your expenses! I don't care about them or your money either. And if anyone is wasteful, it is you! Do you have any idea how far what you squander on a single meal could go back on—"

Grievous abruptly shut up, appalled by what he'd almost just disclosed—he'd been about to say "my homeworld Kalee". He glared at Gunray for a few seconds more, then, mindful of how other people close by were beginning to curiously look his way, whirled and slunk off without a single further word. The Viceroy, stupidly, followed him. Like all successful bullies, the Neimoidian was acutely attuned to detecting weaknesses in his victims and that was what he'd sensed in Grievous just then: a sudden, inexplicable cessation of hostility that hinted at an exploitable failing. He almost scampered after the cyborg in his haste to keep up and find out why he'd suddenly capitulated.

The General sought refuge on one of the small balconies overlooking the gardens outside, barging into the midst of and breaking up a flirtatious interlude betwixt a pair of besotted Munns. The lanky couple at once took their amour elsewhere with uncommon alacrity. Grievous attempted to calm himself. He hunched over further. His head hung low. He took in several long deep deliberate breaths, holding each for a measured count before expelling it. Then, just as he was about to heave a sigh of relief, in marched Gunray, invading his space and his momentary peace. Grievous thrust his head forward, snaking it out, and his yellow glare turned murderous.

"I was not finished talking to you," Gunray said, huffily.

"Yes. You were. I have nothing more to say to you."

"Listen, then. I am tired of your disrespect and your indifference. You have no right to treat me like this. You were created to serve us, and the Trade Federation won't—"

His sentence ended in an abrupt "awrk!" of surprise over suddenly finding one of the cyborg's fists snugged up beneath his fleshy throat, clutching at his multiple collars. At the same time, Gunray felt a hard rough press against the small of his back—he was being shoved backwards over the balcony railing. Grievous held him there, at arm's length, watching with keen pleasure as the shocked Neimoidian began scrabbling at his metal fingers.

"No-oo! Please! Let me go!" he begged.

The cyborg pushed a little further. Gunray assumed he was about to be pitched off the balcony—his scrabbling turned frantic, his pleas into a howl for help. Grievous, immensely cheered, at once pulled the panicky Neimoidian back and upright and let him go. Gunray stooped over and clawed at his own neck as though he'd just been throttled, heaving for air, even though Grievous had taken great care not to exert any undue pressure.

"How dare you!" Gunray cried, as soon as his fright subsided enough for him to catch his breath. "You attack-ed me! Count Dooku will hear of this!"

"Will he now," said Grievous. "Are you also going to tell him how you question his decisions? Encouraged me to act against him?"

"What are you talking about? You're insane, you—you—abomination, you!"

"And—my 'master's skirts'? Really? Is that how you see us, the leadership of the Confederacy, as a joke?"

Gunray frowned. His big eyes goggled out suspiciously. "What?"

"I can recall exactly what you said, you know." Grievous's voice, husky and gruff though it was, began taking on a positively jovial note. "I have that capacity. 'Oh, so you hide behind your master's skirts now!' That is what you said. Word for word. I wonder what Count Dooku will think when I repeat it to him, and all the rest of your conversation?"

The Viceroy's eyes were now literally popping. "Now now, General, let us not be hasty," he said. His own tone turned wheedling. The righteous anger that had hardened him and fostered his brief courage melted away. "I was upset, yes? About my lost planet? And you, you were a little upset also because…because…for your own good reasons," Gunray finished lamely. "There is no need to bother Count Dooku with our very minor and already forgotten disagreement, yes?"

Grievous said nothing, just stared for a moment, then nodded affirmation. Gunray wrung his hands happily, all fake smiles again—it was really rather sickening how he could switch from threats and insults to snivelling platitudes within the space of a few breaths, Grievous thought. He always seemed to think that a show of phoney appeasement was all it ever took to make one forget any indignity, too, and that was equally nauseating. Grievous himself never forgot an insult. He gathered up every slight and affront, all the snubs and unwarranted rebuffs and held them in reserve like a precious nest egg to be studied and mulled over and relived, again and again, whenever he felt the need to refresh his malice or stiffen his resolve against a particularly hated enemy. It was just the way he was and always had been; it was a Kaleesh trait. One rarely got a second chance at anything when dealing with the people of Kalee.

Being able to manhandle the obnoxious Viceroy at last and getting away with it, just a bit, that might deserve forgiving one insult, though…if it were one of the smaller, more piddling ones. Grievous didn't think he'd get the opportunity to express how he really felt towards Nute Gunray ever again…

The largely secret altercation he'd had with the Neimoidian actually wound up putting Grievous into a good mood. He returned to the party in a much better frame of mind than when he'd first bolted out to the balcony and even managed to interact in a halfway decent manner afterwards with several more of the high-ranking military officers present. Grievous found them a lot easier to talk to than the diplomats, given their common interests, and they weren't as inclined to waste his time with mundane prattle and gossip. He also liked the way they always respectfully addressed him out of acknowledgment of his rank and accomplishments, not just because they feared him. The civilians he was supposed to be leading might have been grateful for what he could do for them in the battlefield, yet they had no real appreciation for or understanding of his skills. But some of the officers he spoke to did—he could sense that they did—and that stoked his vanity and made his social obligations seem much more bearable as the evening wore on.

Grievous's almost civil behaviour towards the end of the party did not go unnoticed. The following day, while hitching a ride back to his fleet aboard Dooku's private shuttle, the Sith Lord suddenly remarked, "I saw you speaking with some of the military guests attending my soiree yesterday. Did they express any concern about the intensity of the fighting they've encountered this past month?"

"No," Grievous replied.

"Could you discern any doubt in their manner at all? Any reluctance or misgivings?"

"No," the cyborg repeated, by now somewhat mystified. He looked curiously at his superior, hoping for more, and after a long moment of silence, Dooku obliged him.

"That is good to hear. I anticipate that the Republic's resistance will soon stiffen. They've begun augmenting their armies with conscripts, to boost the number of available troops."

Grievous, surprised, said, "I have heard nothing of conscription occurring on any planet."

"This comes from Lord Sidious. It is being hidden from the public for now as much as possible. The Senate fears that news of this may harm morale. Foolish of them… People will learn of the new directives soon enough whether they're publicized or not." He paused and a thin smile quirked up the corner of the human's mouth which Grievous could see. "We're wearing them down, General, bit by bit. They can no longer grow clones fast enough to replace their losses. Conscripts ought to be all the easier for you to defeat."

"Yes. The native armies I've encountered have all been generally lacking already. Rushed training, inexperience at undertaking major campaigns…it always shows," Grievous expounded, but Dooku was no longer listening to him. He'd already reached forward for his communications headset and was putting it on, then reclined back in his seat and closed his eyes. Grievous lapsed back into sullen silence. It was just the way he most hated to be treated, tuned out and ignored the instant Dooku had no further interest in his input.

Making it all the more insulting this time was Grievous's growing suspicion that Dooku had ordered his mind alterations in part because he believed him incapable of such lofty concepts as honour and fidelity. The possibility rankled Grievous so badly that he'd begun to entertain notions of letting the Count know that he'd regained his memories and much of his old self in the hopes of garnering some sort of explanation for the human's actions. Why couldn't Dooku have just dealt with him directly, accepted his word instead of having had him butchered into an obedient near semblance of a biodroid? A feral glitter kindled in the cyborg's eyes as he sat there and continued to brood and obsess and fret over his master's treachery. He couldn't even look at the human anymore just then. The temptation to fly at him and force the truth out of him was just too great.

Dooku lifted a hand to his headset. After a moment he began to frown—evidently he was listening to some unwelcome news. Grievous noted his actions moodily. He was damned if he would express any interest or initiate any conversation with the man, not after the way he'd just been snubbed.

Dooku's frown grew more severe. "When do you estimate that will happen?" he said to someone at the other end of his communiqué, then, "No. Send me your ops, the entire overview." He leaned forward and studied something on the hooded screens on the console before him. "No. Stand by," he added.

Grievous continued to feign indifference. After a long pause, he heard Dooku speak again.

"Our old friend, Admiral Talzikan, appears to have run into some difficulty in the Morsicht sector," the Count said.

"Has he," Grievous remarked. He could feel himself under scrutiny, his master regarding him, but still he refused to turn and meet his gaze.

"The Republic has augmented the Calefarians' space fleet to a greater degree than he anticipated. Would you care to look over the situation, General?"

Grievous finally stirred out of his sour funk and leaned over to study the visuals on the console. Even though the simulations being displayed were only two-dimensional, it took him less than a minute to snort and proclaim, "Talzikan is a fool. He's left both flanks unprotected, top and bottom. And he hasn't dedicated enough firepower into taking the command ship."

"If he were to reposition his forces, would the battle be salvageable?" asked Dooku.

"No. He's already taken too many losses. The Republicans will overwhelm him in time. Nothing he does now will win this battle."

"I see… And if he received assistance, reinforcements…could he win then?"

"If enough reinforcements were properly deployed and utilized—perhaps."

Dooku went silent again. After a long moment, he asked, "Where is your fleet just now, General?"

"Departing Resstoph Base. About an hour out."

"Would it be possible to divert a portion of your forces elsewhere on fairly short notice? An hour perhaps?"

Grievous jerked his head up, instantly keen and alert. "A pre-selected number of my vessels are on constant standby for integration into a task group on ten minute's notice," he boasted. "I can have a second, larger force available a half hour after that."

"Of course," Dooku said, and looked at the cyborg with something very like genuine admiration for the first time in ages. He turned back to the console displays and began punching in a string of numbers and symbols. "I am giving you the coordinate codes for a new hyperspace lane, one your navigators won't have. Use it to get your task force en route to Morsicht—let them know we'll be at the battle site before them in time to pass on their exact destination." Dooku glanced again at his Supreme Commander, with more approval and considerable enthusiasm of his own. "A little diversion, General. One I expect you'll enjoy."

"Yes," Grievous agreed, and with that, all his remaining resentment towards the man withered and blew away, temporarily overridden by the delightful prospect of imminent, unexpected combat. In battle, Grievous would set his personal concerns aside, no matter how pressing. He always had, even before the mind alterations that for a time had forced him to do so.

Dooku advised his droid pilot of their own course changes and Grievous hunched back over the displays to monitor the constantly updating stream of incoming data. By the time they popped out of hyperspace on the outskirts of the fighting, Grievous already had a good idea of how to manage the situation and turn it around. Dooku contacted Talzikan directly. The harried Admiral initially hid his shock, but lost it when the Count ordered him to turn over command of all Separatist forces present to General Grievous.

"Grievous is coming here?" Talzikan sputtered over the comm link. "But Count Dooku, sir! The General won't—"

"I am already present," the general in question interjected sharply, "and also aware of your tactics' failure. I warned you against timidity before, Talzikan. It's costing you again."

"We're up against nine star destroyers, General Grievous! If intelligence had warned us—"

"Not a valid excuse! Stand by! Reinforcements are en route. I will provide you with an ETA and classifications momentarily. And order your frigates to retreat, now, all of them. Can't you see that the Calefarians are regrouping to attack them? They mean to splinter them off, Admiral."

"I—did see. Those Calefarian vessels are no match for the frigates. They haven't the firepower to destroy them."

"They don't have to destroy them. Isolate and maim, that's all it takes..."

The crisp exchanges—Grievous barking orders, Talzikan's weakening objections—went on. Dooku just sat back and enjoyed the show. He didn't often get the chance to partake in any frontline action…of any sort.

By the time the cyborg's first task group arrived, he'd taken full charge of the remnants of Talzikan's fleet and already begun repositioning many of the vessels. The new arrivals caught the Republicans by complete surprise—the Republic commanders were still trying to puzzle out their enemies' sudden manoeuvres. Grievous threw his own naval heavyweights, his Commerce Guild destroyers, against the star destroyers at once. Mayhem ensued as the narrow skeletal Commerce Guild ships swarmed in amongst the broader star destroyers, getting in far too close, risking collision, even winging one another as they recklessly fired. The big Republic vessels were only outnumbered two or three to one, a quite manageable margin for the more heavily armed and armoured star destroyers to normally contend with, but they needed space to pick off their opponents, not be embroiled in some wild demolition derby where every enemy taken out became a flaming projectile that needed dodging. The captains of the star destroyers began trying to vector away from one another, breaking up their own formation. While they were thus occupied, Grievous ordered in a fresh wave of attackers, the droid-manned AGDs that could, in a pinch, double as suicide missiles.

Living crews might have hesitated, mortal captains might have wanted a few extra seconds to contemplate their demise before plunging ahead. Droids suffered from no such weaknesses of emotion and the courses they steered were sure and swift. One by one, the mighty star destroyers were struck and most went careening away, their twin tower bridges destroyed, headless and out of control. Only three managed to deflect their attackers with evasive actions or firepower and one of those collided with one of the nearby Commerce Guild destroyers by sheer accident even as both spaceships sought to avoid each other. Then it was Talzikan's turn to redeem himself—he attacked the crippled Republicans once again with his own dwindled fleet, much bolstered by the knowledge that more reinforcements were due any minute and that the ferociously efficient Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies now had his back. As before, he targeted the command ship, the giant one, the only Imperator-class star destroyer in the field. They'd been one of the ships to successfully deflect the AGDs attacking them, but not without grave cost. The two droid vessels had still managed to slam into the base superstructure of the command towers, taking out more than half of the destroyer's port turbolaser turrets and coming perilously close to breaching the main reactor.

Many of the remaining Calefarian vessels were also adrift. The savage assault on the star destroyers had crippled the morale of the Calefarian crews too—they were not natural fighters and were mentally ill-equipped to deal with the harsh demands and stresses of warfare, even when aided by more militant friends. Grievous, devoid of pity or mercy in his altered state, sent all his still usable remaining ships in to destroy what they could before the Calefarians recovered enough to protect themselves.

General Grievous and Count Dooku continued to watch everything from the vantage point of the human's own luxury shuttle. It seemed the most unlikely of emergency command posts and was hardest on Grievous—he had no room to pace, could only stand and stare out the front viewports over the droid pilot's head if he wanted a live look at what was going on—yet still he managed with his rudimentary ops displays and communications; and when his second task group arrived on schedule, he deployed them with the same speed and confidence he would have exhibited had he been directing the battle from the bridge of the Invisible Hand. The second group's appearance may as well have been heralded with a death knell. Many of the Republican ships were now only partially functional and some were leaderless, and the Calefarians, left on their own, were folding fast. And Admiral Talzikan, as much angered and embarrassed by Grievous's rescue as he was grateful, was for once feeling vindictive enough to join the cyborg in making it a rout. Between the two of them, they began decimating the enemy vessels, coolly working their way through whatever still showed some fight.

The Imperator-class star destroyer was soon the only really dangerous opponent left. The enormous vessel, a more robust, stretched variant of the more usual Venators, was of a new, seldom encountered type whose practical combat capabilities were still somewhat of an unknown, and the Separatists circled in warily, taking distant potshots, avoiding her undamaged right side. Grievous was even more cautious. He'd taken the liberty of ordering the shuttle closer to the action once the skirmish had swung his way, but the reputed firepower the lmperator carried gave him pause and he took care to have the pilot keep them well astern of the destroyer.

Even Dooku got to his feet to better observe when several squadrons of expendable droid fighters began harassing the Imperator to test her defences and estimate how battle-worthy she still was. The answer came swiftly—bursts of well-coordinated cannon fire brought many of the droids down with ease, one after the other. But there were also long stretches of surface exterior which the fighters over flew with impunity, nor did any of the hangar bay doors open to disgorge any challenging Republic fighters. Grievous wondered aloud whether the destroyer's main flight deck was even still operational.

"I doubt they're carrying a full complement of support units," Dooku opined. "A new class, likely rushed through its trials… It would be reckless to send out a fully loaded unseasoned vessel."

"There was flight traffic out of her earlier on in the battle," said Grievous. "Talzikan claims the hangar bays were specifically targeted while they were still open. It's possible he succeeded at that task, caused internal damage that cost them their shielding or life support."

The two paused to watch the star destroyer pop off another salvo of shots from her still functioning heavy turrets. Several of them struck the single Banking Clan frigate present—careless of the Munns, to have strayed into the destroyer's prime firing zone—but the frigate's shielding appeared to handle the blows without apparent exterior damage. "Low intensity blast," Grievous mused. "They're diverting power or the reactor's failing."

"Or they're preparing to run and jump. I expect that they would rather abandon their unfortunate Calefarian colleagues and risk collision than see that ship fall into Separatist hands." He looked over at his Supreme Commander, at the way his stark head was thrust eagerly forward, his fierce ardent power tautly reined in. "She'd make a fine prize, General," Dooku added quietly.

The suggestion, once made, proved impossible for the cyborg to resist. He didn't even stop to consider whether the deed was doable, just shifted instantly into planning mode. The wild glitter of before reignited in his eyes, born this time of excitement and intense anticipation. Dooku watched him examine the latest composite sensor sweeps, the white fingers of one hand reaching forward to trace the outline of the giant star destroyer on the display with subconscious avarice.

"A boarding party, General?" the Sith Lord asked.

"Yes. I'll take droids only, here, through the ventral bay. If they can get the flight deck doors open… Talzikan will have to hold her in place. I'll tear out his heart if he doesn't!"

"Might I advise that we also try using the starboard loading dock bay?"

"We?" Grievous regarded his master with surprise. "You wish to take part?"

In answer, Dooku gazed out the shuttle viewports. "There are Jedi aboard that ship," he said, "one of whom I should very much like to have a few words with." His head tilted fractionally towards Grievous and he smiled. "No need to pout, General. You'll have plenty of opportunities to collect your trophies. They'll come to us the moment I set foot on that vessel."

"I'll order a second party," Grievous said and turned back to his readouts.

The Imperator began steering a determined course, slow and deliberate, away from planet Calefar and the heart of the littered battle zone. Grievous rushed through his preparations, issuing commands and redeploying his forces hastily. He sent the shuttle around in a long arcing loop to intercept Talzikan's command ship and the expression on the Admiral's face fell when he first realized that the two leaders meant to come aboard, then became incredulous when all they did was transfer to one of the gunboats he carried in his hold and speed away again. Chastised, he turned to his new orders with greater zeal.

The Separatists were soon pounding away again on the hapless star destroyer, their fire now more focused and intense. The first landing parties slipped through the great warship's defences while she fought back and began forcing their way in through the Imperator's vulnerable belly where some of the shielding had failed. Their attempt plus a fresh onslaught from the hounding ships then covered Grievous's own stealthier approach. Count Dooku's advice turned out to be excellent. No one had anticipated a direct attack on one of the sounder, more difficult entry points into the Republic ship, and it took the accompanying Vulture and tri-fighter droids but a moment's work to clear the way for Dooku to work his own particular brand of magic and get the loading dock door open.

A single squad of clone troopers was manning the vestibule battle station within. A pair of Vultures took them out with a couple of careful, well-aimed shots while the other members of the boarding party entered and landed. Dooku and Grievous disembarked their gunboat to no opposition whatsoever, although that, the Count cautioned, was about to change.

"We've been found out already, I fear," he said to his Supreme Commander as they strode across the empty floor, the two Vulture escorts, converted over into their stilted walking mode, clacking loudly along beside them. "I sense a good many men just beyond that door, and—ah yes!—several Jedi will shortly be joining them." The Count lifted his handsome head and near strutted with a sudden surfeit of energy and high spirits when he delivered this news. He seemed about to engage in a spot of pleasant recreation rather than about to risk his life in a lethal firefight against superior numbers. "Be proud, General. I believe your battle droid parties have already accessed the flight deck, yet we have been deemed the greater threat. You had best ready yourself. They mean to stop us at all costs."

"I'm always ready," Grievous growled, and straightened and shrugged his cape back off his shoulders before cracking his two arms apart into four with a resounding snap and a flourish.

Dooku again took the initiative and utilized the Force to override the main cargo doors' mag lock. An instant fusillade of blaster fire greeted them, much of it just as swiftly returned as ricochets off the scintillating blades of no less than five lightsabers, then came a break. The Republicans opposing them had been expecting a party of droids, not their terrifying General and most certainly not Count Dooku, the mastermind behind the very Confederacy itself! Many of them froze up as the reality of whom they were facing sank in, unable to believe their eyes.

Grievous and Dooku charged through the doorway and in amongst the soldiers before their shock and fright wore off. Most of the men—and several women—were just regular members of the ship's crew, and it was their great misfortune that day to have been called upon to utilize their basic security and arms training to try and repel the two most difficult intruders they could have possibly encountered. Whether expertly carved up by Dooku's deft single blade or more brutally slashed or simply kicked to death by the cyborg and his whirling quartet, they went down like swatted flies, some still registering almost comically exaggerated expressions of surprise. The only people who kept fighting and firing throughout were the few clone troopers present. Their long indoctrination and somewhat simpler minds kept them focused and functioning in pure combat mode despite the distractions of their enemies' identities…not that it really did any of them any good in the end.

A few more swipes and stabs and pistoning blows and the deed was done. The two Separatist warriors each killed their last opponent at precisely the same time and both came to a standstill just a few meters apart. They looked at each other and looked one another over. Between the two of them, they'd just killed over six dozen people without either incurring a scratch or a dent. Dooku, pleased, raised his lightsaber in salute and Grievous, equally well satisfied, inclined his head in deference. It was very gratifying to discover that they could fight so well together in the field.

They left the fighter droids behind with orders to keep the loading dock secured for additional boarding parties and moved on. Dooku, a tall man, walked rapidly enough that Grievous could stride out almost normally. They conferred briefly as they marched.

"We'll see better action in a moment," Dooku said. "Four Jedi ahead, about to come through that intersecting passage there."

"You can sense them that precisely?" asked Grievous.

"Oh yes. And they sense me, not with quite the same exactitude, but enough so to know I am here on this ship." He halted and bade Grievous to stand a little behind him. "We'll wait here for them. Take them out quickly, General."

Grievous did as told and stared hungrily over his master's shoulder while marking time. A stiff, fitful breeze pulled at their ends of their heavy armourweave capes and blew into the sockets of the cyborg's mask—the air pressure seeking to re-equalize itself after a breach somewhere nearby in the ship's containment field. He could hear distant klaxons and low thuds and felt the vibration of labouring engines and the more staccato brief tremours as the Imperator took hits, all the familiar signs of a warship under fire. Then the Jedi came around the corner of the intersection, just as Dooku had said they would.

There were four of them, all human, an older-looking, long-haired man walking in advance of the rest. They'd had enough warning of danger to already have their lightsabers at the ready, but the sight of Grievous was a shock to them. "What in—" the first Jedi began to say.

Dooku at once flipped himself forward through the air and came out of his aerial tuck and roll aiming a roundhouse slash at the astonished Jedi's chest even as he landed lightly on his feet before him. At the same time Grievous lunged forward and forced the other three to back-pedal, away from the Count, to save themselves. The first Jedi barely saved himself too—he recoiled just before Dooku's scarlet blade could cut his flesh. It aerated his tunic instead, parting the thick cloth from his shoulder to the opposite side. Angrily, the Jedi fell into his favourite stance and struck back. He had a rather inflated opinion of his own talents and was not afraid to take on a traitor like Dooku. Yet.

Grievous, meanwhile, drove the other men back into the narrower connecting corridor, where he could more easily hold and confront the trio. Dismay, fear, and grim determination, all flitted in turn across their youthful faces. After a brief exchange of glances, they attacked in unison and fought hard, showing undeniable, foolish courage, but their technique was straight off the training floor and easy to analyze. They hadn't had enough practical experience yet to develop much individual style and Grievous thought it likely that they'd been promoted to Knighthood faster than normal, too fast probably, to fill the Jedi Order's ever declining ranks. The realization both cheered and annoyed Grievous. He wasn't going to get much sport out of these three green youngsters.

The General quickly discerned how to anticipate their moves and used two of his weapons to target and dispatch a single fighter while using the other two to fend off the others. The last Jedi was so disheartened by watching his comrades fall that he virtually gave up. Grievous, disappointed, used a foot to grab and knock him down and killed him with the same grim efficiency he might have shown upon slaughtering a calf. He rushed back into the main corridor, but Dooku was already stepping over the corpse of his own opponent and not at all in need of any assistance.

"Useless," Grievous said, disgusted. "They fought like padawans."

"More of your rushed training perhaps."

"That is what I am thinking," the General said and fell back into place alongside Dooku as they resumed walking. "I hope that is not typical of the calibre of any other Jedi left onboard."

"No, not all of them," Dooku said cryptically, and led on.

The Count stopped once to use his Force powers to deactivate an automated intruder defence mechanism in the ceiling, otherwise the next few minutes passed uneventfully. Grievous, checked and chafing, all but pranced beside the human. He couldn't understand why they were advancing so slowly. The Republicans were surely becoming aware of their presence—they ought to be stepping up their pace and pressing their attack while they still could! But Dooku just kept walking, at a fast and lively clip for a human to be sure, but still just a walk. At the next intersection they came to, he halted again and turned to face the jittery cyborg.

"I'll leave you on your own now, General," he said. "Continue straight down this corridor until you reach the first major turnoff for the bow sectors. If you hurry you should be able to intercept another party that is being diverted our way. You'll find some sport there—at least two more Jedi and a number of troopers and crew soldiers. Kill all the Jedi you encounter or let any that flee lead you to the ship's bridge. I will meet you there in either case."

"You are going to the bridge alone?" Grievous asked, surprised.

"Not yet. I have a ship to stop first. Good hunting." And with a little hitch to elevate his chin and a spin on one heel, Count Dooku turned about and went off down the new corridor, towards the Imperator's stern. Grievous looked after him, feeling the unusual desire to accompany the man in order to protect him—the warrior's code was deeply ingrained in that small part of the cyborg which was still Kaleesh and it acknowledged that Dooku, for better or worse, was still the master, a teacher whose students were honour-bound to defer to him and offer their lives in his service if need be. But it was a miniscule acknowledgement at best, which had been whittled down over long months by the Count's cruelty and disdain. Grievous was not sure anymore whether Dooku even deserved to be his master.

As usual, the alien cyborg sought relief to his dilemma in action. Unleashed at last, he bolted off, stretching out in a bipedal run at first, then dropping down onto all fours to leap ahead even faster. His new gait gave him the option of beating any additional automated defence systems by bounding from side to side and racing along on the walls. There wasn't much a weapon programmed to detect and blast intruders moving down the center of a corridor could do to stop him as long as he avoided using the floor.

The turnoff came up and Grievous whipped around the corner, skidding out into an upright posture…and straight into an advancing squad of clone troopers! Several of the white armourplast-clad men went flying. The white-armoured cyborg did too—he tumbled over and over, kicked himself up into a tight somersault, and thudded down to a standstill amidst another mixed group of Republican soldiers. Which included more Jedi, a pair of festively coloured Twi'leks gawking back at him from within spitting distance. There came one of those pregnant pauses during which everyone present had no idea of what to do next. A wag from another universe could have scored big at that moment by simply uttering the phrase, "General Grievous, I presume."

The big cyborg drew himself up haughtily and glared about at his accidental audience. He could not have devised a more stunning and unexpected entrance if he'd tried. His movement galvanized the two Jedi. They went for their weapons and aggressively stepped towards him.

Grievous immediately withdrew his own lightsabers, sweeping his arms out to ignite them, almost frying a couple of onlookers inadvertently. He crouched and sprang and the air was suddenly filled with crackling streaks of light and showers of burning multicoloured sparks. Everyone came to life then, panicking and yelling and trying to scramble away from the erupting duello; even the clone troopers, half-blinded and unsure of what was expected of them, began to back up. Nobody could have found their targets anyway. Within the constricted space of the corridor, the fight was sheer bedlam, impossible to follow, nothing but fleeting impressions of two sleek humanoid figures bouncing about a whirling dervish of skeletal limbs and flashes of crimson and white, the whole of it enveloped in a blazing light-storm of plasma energy. The fight shifted and people started screaming as Grievous chopped through them indiscriminately and trampled the ones that had fallen in his wild efforts to get at the Jedi.

The mob of frightened soldiers hampered the Twi'leks. They pulled some of their attacks and aborted others that might have hurt their men. Grievous had no such compunctions. He didn't care who he went through. With his arms outstretched, reared up to full height, he almost filled the corridor and swept the Republicans before him or flattened them underfoot. And he'd gotten the Jedi's number—they were good, much better than the youngsters of earlier, but still not good enough. One of them suddenly stumbled in the very act of trying not to tread on someone and Grievous pounced on her before she could regain her form. He slapped a foot over her sword arm, slashed her torso wide open. Her lightsaber dropped and rolled away from her spasming fingers.

The remaining Twi'lek, a green male, cried out and hesitated and glanced stupidly behind himself. Grievous lunged and stabbed at him with both left hands. He leapt aside, exactly the wrong way, and the cyborg whirled and nailed him in midair, wounding him badly enough that his legs crumpled out from under him when he landed. Again, Grievous swooped in for the kill.

Watching the second of their premier warriors get cut to ribbons was more than the remaining Republicans could bear. It was all too shocking and immediate, the monstrous cyborg too horrifying and huge—terrorized, they cut and ran and the troopers ran with them. Fearless though the clones were, they did have one great failing, they needed good leadership or to be left strictly alone to be utilized at their best. Now, seeing their superiors retreat, they did so too, not out of cowardice but out of the worst possible imitation.

Grievous rose out of his stoop and watched the men scatter and suddenly laughed out loud. It was all too perfect. It was his Coruscant dream, in miniature, the Republicans fleeing before him like a broken covey of flightless meadow runners. He sheathed his weapons and bounded forward, driven by playful savagery, and killed the first laggard he caught with his bare metal hands. The man's flesh tore apart like so much pulp. His blood sprayed every which way, drenching the cyborg's forearms and face and the plates on his chest. Grievous flung the pieces away and charged on. He laughed again, delighting in his bloodlust and his own invincible prowess.

His feet abruptly slipped out from under him and he slammed down hard, face-first and sprawling. There was no possible way he could have tripped. His awkward pratfall had the familiar feel of having just been Force-manipulated. Seething and quite speechless with rage, he rolled over onto one angular haunch. Sure enough, a man clad in civilian garb was walking down the middle of the corridor towards him, a calm cipher in the midst of pandemonium.

"That's far enough," he said.

The imperious tone of his voice, his aged face, the silver hair—for one dreadful second Grievous thought it was Dooku come back to ruin his glory, then he saw that the man's beard was shot through with brown flecks and that his dark clothing was rough and homespun and untailored. Not the Sith Lord at all, but somebody from the same era, a one-time peer of Dooku's, a substitute. Hopeless hatred flooded the cyborg and with a guttural broken snarl he launched himself at his new opponent.

The old Jedi met the General's charge without flinching, his lightsaber weaving through an intricate, impossibly fast pattern to turn aside all four of the cyborg's first blows. Grievous at once recognized something of Dooku's skill in the Jedi's counter. The sulphurous fire in his eyes flared brighter, his passion to destroy fed by the sick joy of knowing that he'd met a real challenge whose killing would bring him especial pleasure. Grievous reined himself in, stepping back to regroup and better savour what was coming. He regarded his enemy with an unsettling mixture of scorn and greed.

"You won't stop me. None of you will," Grievous declared.

The Jedi was too canny to be drawn into a distracting and useless exchange of insults. He instead calmly examined the creature confronting him—yes, it was Grievous, the Knight Slayer himself, here on his ship! The old Master had sensed the presence of the Dark Side the instant it had invaded his vessel and had felt the pain of his comrades dying even as he'd hurried to try and aid them, but this demon offspring of the Separatists' twisted technology he hadn't anticipated at all—it was a shock just to have to behold him in person and feel the black malignancy he radiated, as if some pestiferous beacon of evil. But he meant what he'd said, the human, every word of it. No matter what, he was not going to allow this monster to continue his slaughter unopposed.

Grievous, impatient, broke the impasse with a sudden snort and by dropping into his offensive crouch. If the Jedi refused to speak to him, all right then, he'd make him beg for his life soon enough.

He flew at the man once more, remembering his lessons this time, keeping one foot glued to the deck while he determined the extent of the Jedi's abilities. The human was a Master for sure and very probably the commanding general of the Republic fleet Grievous had just helped decimate. The cyborg glided about him warily, probing with a lightning stab from one angle and then another, following it up with as powerful a blow as he could muster. All were intercepted easily and held without apparent effort. The Jedi obviously had decades of experience behind him and Grievous was not about to defeat him with a show of raw skill. He decided he'd have to tap into his engineered strengths just as the Jedi drew on the Force. Mechanical tit for metaphysical tat. Grievous set down to wear his opponent out with sheer persistence.

The Jedi found himself in trouble fast. He'd heard of the cyborg's unorthodox methods of lightsaber combat from lucky survivors and was not quite as intimidated as Grievous might have hoped when he began juggling his weapons, but having to concentrate so hard to constantly keep track of all four blades and guard against their multiple attacks was exhausting. He was soon breathing hard and regretting that he'd let the droid general engage him at all. He should have followed up on his Force attack and stuck to striking at him from afar, as the Council had advised. But foolishly, like many Jedi, he simply hadn't believed that a Force-insensitive construct could best a fully-trained, properly prepared Force wielder at lightsaber duelling. The very notion demeaned the centuries-old tradition. He'd been so sure that courage and sheer will and sincere belief would defend him against any possible artificial advantage, and to discover that he'd been dead wrong was a worse shock than the reality of the cyborg's presence. The Jedi retreated from Grievous's next flurry of blows, then retreated again. His concentration was fracturing, his morale shaken, and he needed to get away from his relentless pursuer, just for a moment, to rethink his strategy.

Grievous refused to give him that moment. He smelled blood and kept coming. For the first time since the fight had begun, the Jedi felt real fear.

They edged past a fire fighting alcove holding a quantity of supplies meant for manual use and the Jedi saw his chance. He pulled several of the extinguishers free of their restraints by will alone and sent them hurtling at his pursuer. The first tank bounced off one of the cyborg's forearms with a muffled clank, eliciting a grunt of surprise. The next couple he batted away with careless swipes of his lightsabers, seeming more irritated than inconvenienced, then, exactly what the man had hoped for, happened—one extinguisher ruptured into an instant cloud of propellant and dry suppressant.

The old Master ran rapidly backwards away from the explosion. He could hear Grievous cursing and coughing from within the dense plume of suspended particles—what a pity that the chemicals weren't harsh enough to just smother him! Lean metal arms and then the awful skull-like face emerged out of the cloud. The cyborg shook his head violently, advancing again yet still hacking and distracted. Well distanced now, the Jedi gathered himself, calling on the Force all around him, feeling it swell and surge within him, and then—

A curl of frigid blackness draped down, arresting him. The Jedi stood poised, trapped for a moment in excruciating indecision, focused both on the furious beast before him and the helm of his crippled starship. High above his head, something terrible was about to happen…

Grievous shook his head one final time and fixated again on his prey, his blazing glare an ugly reaffirmation of his boundless hatred. The Jedi stared back, dismayed. He no longer had time for this menace. He had to put the creature down fast, pull down the ceiling and bury him...yes, that would work. His hand shot forward in a short jab, hurling out a concentrated blast of energy strong enough to shift starfighters, and Grievous, recognizing the gesture, dropped down low to the floor and ducked his head.

The Force slammed into the cowering General and tore at him, almost succeeding in bending him over. But his feet kept their grip. The attack swept by. And when it was over and Grievous had risen out of his defensive crouch, the two of them paused and stared at each other again, the old Jedi now stunned, the cyborg gloating. Grievous lifted a hand and curled up all but one of its elegant digits. He wagged his finger in a familiar, almost universal gesture of disapproval, tilting his face and narrowing his eyes at the same time.

The Jedi, unappreciative of the cyborg's attempt at humour, suddenly appeared to remember pressing concerns elsewhere and turned and ran.

Grievous jumped forward with a skipping motion, surprised anew. He'd sensed a lot of determination and grit in the old man. Abandoning the fight was not something he'd expected of the Jedi, of any Jedi, really, and it was also very foolish of him to think that Grievous would just let him concede defeat and run off. The cyborg's hops smoothened out into a steady fast trot and much of his rage fell away, replaced by the thrill of the hunt. A good chase was always fine by him. It didn't matter that this one would lead him deep into a veritable mountain of enemy technology and potentially appalling danger, as long as he got his kill and his trophy at the end.

The Jedi maintained his speed and the General followed just fast enough to keep his prey within sight. Twice Grievous saw him glance back when he turned a new corner and so knew that the Jedi was well aware of his pursuit, but the man made no attempt to try any more sneaky tricks—he just ran. The route the Jedi chose seemed oddly deserted. The ship's crew was fighting the other boarding parties or trying to contain the breached sectors, or so Grievous imagined. On occasion, a single soldier or knot of men did appear, but they invariably flattened themselves against the walls as the pair passed and the cyborg ignored them. Any remaining automated intruder defences worked no better. They'd either gone offline or the old Jedi was turning them off as he ran. Grievous accessed what he'd memorized of the star destroyer's layout. It was as Dooku had suggested—the man was heading for the ship's helm high up in the starboard tower. The General decided that he wanted that, the excitement of overcoming the opposition he was sure to find on the bridge and slaughtering the Jedi in the vessel's own nerve center, and he slowed even more.

He lost contact with his foe only once, when the Jedi ducked suddenly down a juncture. Grievous didn't worry. He already knew what lay at the end of the intersecting corridor.

A large bank of elevator doors awaited him. Grievous didn't even bother with any controls, he just stabbed his fingers into the join between the two door halves of the lift in use and wrenched them apart. He tore one of the halves off completely, threw the crumpled panel aside, and pushed partway into the space revealed, a little cautious, minding his head. The spacious shaft was lit well enough for him to still see the elevator car the Jedi had taken rocketing up far above him. He jumped inside onto the far wall and began to climb. The shaft was full of projecting ledges, guiding runners for the cars, even a service ladder. Grievous had no trouble at all accelerating into what was not so much a rapid ascent as a vertical sprint.

The car stopped and the cyborg was there seconds later, scrambling up on top of it to yank off the emergency hatch plate and drop inside. He surged through the open elevator doors on all fours, through a pressure hatch, another, and there, hurrying down the broad corridor before him was the Jedi. Walking fast, not running. The man was clearly not expecting him to catch up so soon.

Grievous leapt up onto his feet, whipping out a quartet of lightsabers as he did so, and roared, "Jedi!"

This time the old warrior looked, if possible, even more surprised than when Grievous had withstood his Force-attack. He ignited his own weapon slowly, still staring; his face appeared almost to blanch a little. Grievous glided forward, sinking down into his fighting stance, arms going up. The Jedi adopted an offensive position of his own. Then, his gaze shifted and he thrust out one hand.

A panel in the ceiling shook, came loose and plummeted down. Grievous dodged aside with a snarl. Another fell, angling towards him, and this one he slashed into so much metal confetti with all four lightsabers. He sought his opponent, wanting to look him in the eyes again, but the Jedi had already taken to his heels. The cyborg took up the chase once more, the final chase, already revelling in the carnage he'd cause, the fighting, the terror—

The Jedi abruptly skidded to a halt, forcing Grievous to stop also lest he run him over. A tall dark figure, crowned with silver, wreathed in tendrils of thin reeking smoke, stood in the entranceway onto the bridge. "You are too late," the figure said.

"Dooku." The Jedi, breathing hard, drew himself up and regarded the man blocking his route with little real surprise. "I knew it was you," he added between pants, sounding disgusted.

Grievous, whose own immediate reaction upon catching sight of the Sith Lord had been a flash of rage at having his glorious pursuit interrupted, yielded to Dooku's higher authority and deactivated his lightsabers. He slid forward to better cut off any escape attempts and stood waiting for further orders with his now empty hands clenching and unclenching, all but champing in his impatient restraint. He watched as the Count began to smile, one corner of his mouth quirking upward, his expression smug, superior...familiar.

"No greeting for an old friend?" Dooku asked the other human lightly.

"You're no friend, not to anyone. Not since you turned," the Jedi replied.

"Turned, have I?" The Count smiled more broadly as if he were delighting in a particularly clever joke. "To what, pray tell? Order? Security? Free commerce? Are those the sins you think me guilty of?"

The other man's lips peeled back in a fierce bitter grin of his own. "Try murder, treachery, and seduction. Don't attempt to sway me with your delusions, 'old friend'. I know exactly what you've become. I know how you misuse your powers."

"Strange. The Republic started this war. How odd to hear the aggressor speak of misusing power. Still, I could begin to forgive that if you were to set an example and offer some restitution. You have knowledge that could end this war."

The Jedi laughed. "Yes, end it in your favour, no doubt!" 

"Would it really matter? The killing would be over."

"No, just delayed. I won't condemn the Galaxy to enslavement."

Dooku sighed. "That is such a narrow view of what could be."

"It is an accurate view. One that you and your minions will never enjoy."

"You always were stubborn, Ethin. Stubborn and closed-minded. A shame." He looked past his former colleague at the frightful apparition guarding the corridor and said, "Take him, General. Alive, if you please."

The shock evident on the Jedi's face as he whirled around told the cyborg that even though the two humans seemed so familiar with one another, this new one no longer knew Dooku at all. Grievous leapt at the opportunity to renew his attack with savage glee, reigniting two lightsabers with his upper hands alone, leaving the lower two free to snatch and grab. He danced in close, pressing his opponent, forcing him to fight, showing off. The man shrank back, hampered by his incredulous disbelief over what was happening to him.

"You can't— Stop it! How can you allow this?" he cried to Dooku. He had to use both hands to hold off the next crushing blow and managed to wrench the lower part of his body aside just before one of the grasping metal hands could seize him. "Michel," he yelped, "for pity's sake, call him off!"

Dooku, watching, just smiled again. "Magnificent, isn't he? The perfect blend."

"Are you insane? He's a monster!"

"No, he is the future. My future. Ethin, this is your last chance. Capitulate now and I promise that my Supreme Commander will be merciful."

"Mercy from a metal puppet!" spat the Jedi. Grievous, furious, almost forgot himself and lopped off his opponent's head for that one. He snagged the man's robes instead, then abruptly released them, making the Jedi stagger, letting him know that he was in control and just toying with him now. His finely tuned body wove from side to side with exquisite, elusive grace. He danced again, probed with short swipes from both of his weapons at once, waiting for the perfect moment. The Jedi fended him off with mounting desperation. It was getting harder and harder for him to protect himself. Like Dooku, he was well past his actual physical prime, and the fruitless running battle through the length of his destroyer piled on top of long hours of earlier fighting had worn him out. Even more fatiguing was the knowledge that he'd failed, failed to lead his people to victory, failed to ward off the invaders that had stormed his command, even failed in personal combat against this grotesque amalgamation who was now seeking to disable him at the behest of a man he'd once considered a contemporary and a friend. The instant that the Jedi contemplated defeat, the Force within him guttered, fading as his own will and spirit faltered. Against an opponent like Grievous, that was all it took.

The cyborg slashed with both lightsabers at the same time once more. The Jedi held the blows, barely, leaning into his weapon for added strength, and with an inhuman twist of one wrist, a slight flip, a little swing, Grievous lifted one of his hilts and cut off the Jedi's left hand.

It was the man's free hand and he managed to keep his own lightsaber up with the other even though he gasped with shock and pain. But it cost him his speed. Grievous's lower hands shot out and latched onto his foe's sword arm before he could fully recover and with another two twists destroyed the limb's elbow and wrist joints, crushing the intricate junctions of bone and connective tissue into so much organic rubble.

This time the Jedi stifled a scream. His lightsaber fell from his useless remaining hand. He dropped to his knees, groaning loudly. Grievous straightened up and secured his weapons. He walked around behind the Jedi, sauntering almost, reintegrating his arms as he went. Dooku was smiling broadly again. "Well done, General," he exclaimed.

Grievous heard the sincerity in his tone and basked in it—he couldn't help himself. It was rare for his master to praise him so, rarer still for him to do it when others could hear. He looked down at the hunched body of the man he had maimed. The Jedi was shaking, almost cringing into his robes, still making a lot of noise. Grievous had to restrain himself from kicking him, to shut him up.

He placed a foot on one of the Jedi's calves instead and grabbed the scruff of his neck by his clothes and yanked his body upright. It was a practised gesture, one he'd learned and executed many times in the past when serving as San Hill's intimidation specialist, and it earned him another admiring glance now from his master as the elegant old Sith Lord strode closer.

"I am sorry, old friend," Dooku said, his voice now sad and sounding truly regretful. "I wish you had chosen to cooperate instead of… Well, let us proceed. The new clone shipments scheduled for integration into your Grand Army next week…I believe you know of their assigned postings, am I correct?"

The man he was addressing writhed slowly in his helpless suffering. He was unable to externally channel the Force anymore and free himself from the freakish, half-machine creature who'd seized him and was forcing him to kneel, yet he could still muster strength and righteous outrage enough to lift his chin and regard the fallen brother standing over him with utter contempt. "I won't tell you a thing," he croaked before spitting out a mouthful of bloody phlegm.

"Are you certain?"

"You've shamed yourself and the Order," the Jedi added, then moaned, gripped by another spasm of agony. Grievous jerked him to one side, administering a short, savage reprimand.

"Arrogant scum. Let me get it out of him," he growled.

"No, just hold him," said Count Dooku.

They fell silent, the three of them, the Jedi still clutched by the cyborg's merciless hand and the Sith Lord standing quietly, gazing down. For a long interval, nothing whatsoever happened. Grievous glanced irritably at his master. It was not like Dooku to be mired in indecisiveness.

The Jedi suddenly convulsed, his body contorting. "No!" he shrieked, arching back against Grievous's legs with spine-cracking force. He started flopping back and forth so hard that the cyborg had to use both hands to restrain him. "No!" he screamed again. "Never! Never! I—" And as abruptly as that, his fit was over and he slumped, limp. Grievous, still half-bent over, badly startled but concealing it, blinked rapidly, confused. Had the Jedi fainted?

Dooku sighed again, more sharply than before. "A shame," he said. "He might have been useful to us. Well, enough of that. The bridge is ours, General. I'll leave it to you to finish up."

He turned without another word and went back through the entranceway. Grievous slowly let the Jedi's slack body droop to the floor. His head lolled back, exposing his blank, lifeless face, but Grievous had to touch the wide-open, staring eyes for himself before he'd accept that the man was in fact quite dead.

The Imperator's helm turned out to be huge, larger even than the Invisible Hand's bridge, and Grievous walked about conducting a careful inspection even as he established communications with his droid units and updated himself via his built-in commlinks. Many of the crewmen manning the various positions had never even had time to quit their chairs. They sat slumped or sprawled over, their bodies scorched by a discrete tracery of burns. Others lying scattered about on the floor and the numerous clone troopers heaped just inside the heavy recessed doors of the entranceway were either partially dismembered or laced with the more typical cauterized wounds inflicted by lightsabers. The captain was still seated in his chair, reclining back, his arms dangling. His face bore the same blank, staring expression as the dead Jedi Master and his ears and nostrils were still oozing blood.

Grievous started trembling. The Sith Lord was capable of reaching into minds so deeply that he could fry nerve impulses and leave their owners brain-dead as easily as he manipulated the electrical currents of the hatch doors he opened. The Jedi had managed to protect his secrets at the cost of his life. This captain—? No, impossible to guess at what Dooku might have gotten out of him before blasting the man's mind into oblivion, not unless Grievous wanted to ask the Count directly. Maybe Dooku had just wanted to kill the captain without much exerting himself, neatly and cleanly, to maintain that serene, unruffled, misleading exterior he so loved to affect.

A terrible image abruptly came to Grievous, that of Dooku using his mind powers on Lissa. If the Count ever found out what the woman had done, he'd torture her and make Grievous watch, watch while she was slowly robbed of her intellect and facilities and reduced to idiocy. That would be Grievous's torture then, knowing that his one hope of being restored to some semblance of normalcy had been erased. He could never risk letting Dooku know that he'd regained his memories, never. Not until he was prepared to kill him afterwards.

Grievous swallowed his fears beneath fresh resolves and turned back to his work. When he went to the viewports at the front of the bridge, he saw that the Imperator's flight deck doors were open and that droid fighters were entering and departing unopposed. He also learned for the first time that his master had made good on his statement that he would stop the ship, for the Imperator was indeed floating dead in space, courtesy of an interrupted fuel feed. He and Dooku got the comm station fired up and began conferring with Admiral Talzikan, coordinating the last efforts needed to finish securing their prize. A party of battle droids soon arrived at the bridge, then some of the Admiral's people. And then it seemed an apropos time to finally just gloat, and if the expressions on the faces of Grievous and Dooku were briefly in sync as they stood there together at the viewports, gazing out with smug pride at their battle-worn vessels, then that would have been noteworthy for being the last such occurrence for Grievous would never again be able to view the Sith Lord with any feelings of kinship.

Later, both leaders went back to the same loading dock through which they'd first boarded the Imperator to make a few final arrangements regarding some of Grievous's ships which were too damaged to make the hyperspace jump back to his own fleet. Grievous, who took a far more circuitous route than did the Count, showed up with his usual lightsabers affixed in an impressive ring about his waist and the sleeve pockets of his cape crammed full of new trophies. The bright blue-bladed weapon of the old Jedi Master was among them. Dooku might have actually done the killing on this one occasion, but Grievous had adjudged that he'd beaten his opponent fair and square nonetheless and so felt entirely justified in claiming his reward.

Count Dooku glanced only once at his General's celebratory display when he first arrived, then gazed loftily away, refusing to acknowledge it any further. He thought Grievous's penchant for collecting lightsabers as tasteless and uncouth as a tribal warlord's habit of collecting heads or skins.

A shuttle from the Commerce Guild destroyer Grievous was going to hitch a ride on entered the loading dock bay and settled down well away from Dooku's own far more lavish personal ship. There seemed little left to say, and after a brusque farewell nod, Grievous started walking slowly towards his shuttle. When he was about halfway there, Dooku's voice rang suddenly out behind him, loud and commanding. "General Grievous! Hup!"

The cyborg spun about. The Sith Lord was standing at the foot of his shuttle's landing ramp, his lightsaber drawn and held before him. Even more remarkable was the gesture he made with his free hand, a clear invitation to close and attack. Grievous straightened up, breathing hard. Had he not done enough for the man today?

Dooku smiled and beckoned again. There was about him the same air of lively high spirits as when he'd first marched forth to engage the Republicans guarding the corridor beyond the loading dock doors, the cheerfulness of a dignified old wolf soliciting a pup. Grievous put his head down and stalked closer and started crabbing, gliding sideways with short, almost dainty little steps. But no restraints this time, otherwise he refused to play. His arms split and his four hands snatched up their weapons and flared outward in a full magnificent display.

The Count came forward to meet him. Not one word about Grievous's multiple blades—he was going to let him fight as he pleased! The cyborg's enthusiasm instantly soared. He wove, threw out a false feint, and engaged the man with a tremendous double-bladed frontal swing endowed with not the slightest shred of finesse or restraint, just all the raw, brutal power of which he was capable.

And Dooku felt it, of that he was certain! There was the slightest of yields instead of the more usual sense of chopping at a cliff face whenever the Count held his blows square on. Grievous stepped back and thrust from the left, then the right, then aimed another shattering double hit right at Dooku's face. The Count caught and held him again, the three blades arcing and spitting, Grievous staring into his master's eyes all the while. Again, he sensed the faintest of gives, a tiny tremor. Dooku pushed him off and backed away, his chest moving in and out much harder than it usually did so early in a match.

Grievous, wary of a Force-attack, came at him a third time like a great metal cat, low and slinking, affixing his feet, his eyes burning as brightly as his lightsabers.

"Stop," Dooku commanded.

Grievous could not believe what he'd heard. What kind of nonsense was this? Did the Count want to spar with him or didn't he? He glared at the man angrily while he wrestled with his obedience and hesitated, unsure and unwilling to drop his guard first, but then Dooku swung his blade up into a vertical position before his face, ending the fight ritualistically, and Grievous had little choice but to follow suit. He straightened and held all four of his own lightsabers before his own masked visage, making a brief bouquet of brilliant light out of the weapons. But it was a near thing, his capitulation. He'd come very close to lashing out at the Count's unprotected lower body when the man had first disarmed himself.

They deactivated their lightsabers together and exchanged nods again, and Count Dooku turned and walked off, up the ramp of his shuttle, dismissing Grievous as though he and the fight they'd just engaged in were nothing but a short-lived afterthought. The cyborg stomped furiously off to his own shuttle. It would be a long time before he'd relinquish his bitterness over this latest clash.

Grievous would have been even more enraged had he known that an odd, multi-legged machine shaped somewhat like an oversized stool had been waiting for Dooku at the top of the landing ramp just inside his shuttle and that the whole impromptu sparring match had taken place for no other reason than the pleasure of the ghostly figure floating above the machine's flat, instrumented top. "Lord Sidious," Dooku had murmured to the hologram as soon as he'd entered, bowing deeply in obeisance. "Did you see?"

"Yes," the image replied. "Impressive, most impressive. You've trained him well. I can sense his rage, his consummate hatred. Much of it focused on you, Lord Tyranus."

Dooku shrugged his master's comment aside. "He redirects it when given an opponent. I can control him. He obeys me implicitly."

"So it appears. It is time for our final act, my apprentice. Order your people to begin planning for the assault on Coruscant. Concentrate on the planets on the trade route. I will commit as many clones and Jedi as I can. Wipe them all out."

"It will be done, my Lord. Shall I have Grievous initiate his special projects as well?"

"Yes. I want to see the Loyalist worlds burn."

"As you command."

The holo-image flickered and vanished. Dooku regarded the mobile emitter for a long thoughtful moment, then flicked his cape back over one shoulder and went on into the interior of his shuttle. He had a great deal of work to do.

Grievous also had work to do, but for once sent messages ahead delegating it all to his subordinates. He was still feeling badly rattled by what he'd learned about Dooku's powers and the Sith Lord's puzzling and infuriating parting shot and needed time for his wayward emotions to sort themselves out. Focusing purely on his personal affairs helped him the most, and mulling over whether a message he'd left with his personal physician before departing for Count Dooku's conference had gotten through and engendered a new reply seemed a positively pleasant way to occupy his time compared to angsting any more over Dooku. Never had the Invisible Hand looked so welcoming as it did when he and the remnants of his task groups finally popped out of hyperspace that day to rejoin his fleet. He didn't even bother saying anything to the ship's captain who was hosting him, just ran below to board a shuttle and get over to his own flagship as fast as he could.

The first thing Grievous did upon setting foot on the Invisible Hand's deck was unhook and toss his filthy cloak and newly augmented collection of lightsabers to the battle droid officer who served as his executive assistant with orders to get everything cleaned up and delivered to his quarters. The second thing he did was hurry up to his personal physician's office. To his intense relief, the woman was still there, waiting. She even looked pleased to see him, even though he was long overdue, and hopped up at once and came forward with his comm chip in hand.

"There you are!" she exclaimed. "I sent your message and got a reply again without any trouble at all, sir. Here it is…" She held it out and Grievous took it, managing not to snatch at it this time. Lissa watched him fold his fingers over the little disc carefully, cradling it. "If you like, you can look at it here while I go have a cup of java or something," she added in a chipper tone. "Both of my computers are secure."

Grievous, taken aback, stared at her. "What?"

The woman gestured at his body. "Well, you've obviously been in a fight, sir. I'd like to have a quick look at you once you're finished with your message, if you don't mind, just to make sure everything's okay. It'd be a lot more convenient for you if you stayed."

The cyborg looked down at his gore-streaked chest and then back at his physician. "Is it not very late for you?" he asked, regarding her strangely.

"Yes, but that's okay." She offered him one of her best and blandest smiles. "No Neimoidians to chase away."

Her last remark decided him. "All right. Go," he said, and went for the station above the infirmary chair. Lissa did as ordered and made herself scarce before he finished sitting down.

She spent her break up on the bridge, chatting with the Neimoidian officer of the watch, and when she got back to her office, found Grievous standing by the big viewport, gazing out. His manner was subdued and his expression thoughtful, and she looked at him expectantly, hoping for some feedback on her efforts. But Grievous had nothing to say to her and Lissa couldn't ask. He'd taught her to keep her distance.

His silence lasted throughout his wash and he stood rooted in place while she worked, hunched over with his elbows drawn up and his hands dangling, docile and compliant. Occasionally, Lissa could hear him exhale a deep sighing breath and he kept his eyes open most of the time, seeming distant yet more aware than usual, enough so that she thought it wise to refrain from getting her customary jollies by rubbing over his sweet spots and stick strictly to business. It took her a long time to get him cleaned up and do a proper external inspection of his body. He'd gotten thoroughly bloodied (Lissa tried hard not to think about whose blood it might be) and she found many fresh scorch marks on his duranium plating and scrapes in his metal finish. But there was no real damage. Whatever he'd been up to, he'd gotten through it without any physical repercussions.

Grievous was relaxed enough by the time she finished drying him off that it took very little effort to convince him to have an extra bacta fluid change as well. "All the energy you expended probably depleted your nutrients quite a lot," she told him. "It'd be a good idea to freshen them up." Which was a crock, of course, but it did give him an excuse if he needed one. Grievous agreed to the extra procedure without argument. Although Lissa didn't know it, he'd been enjoying his session as an opportunity to unwind so much that he'd been contemplating ordering her to finish off with a bacta change anyway.

Lissa used the time they spent waiting for the bacta to heat up by giving the cyborg's feet a little added attention and lubricating the joints of each big grasping toe while he reclined in his chair, then hooked him up for his fluid change. Grievous's eyes narrowed with pleasure as the hot liquid began to overheat his innards. It was so soothing and so much better than the old way, and he felt a rush of fresh gratitude towards his physician, that she'd gone beyond the requirements of her duties to design this new routine for him. His feelings finally overcame all his reserve and his usual wariness when dealing with aliens, and when the new bacta enveloped his heart and briefly upped its pounding tempo, he all at once blurted, "I have a new grandchild."

Lissa regarded him with surprise and a dawning pleasure all her own. "Why, that's fine, sir," she said. "Boy or girl?"

"A boy. The first one. The other two were female."

"You don't seem old enough to have three grandchildren," Lissa added warmly, and Grievous responded to the old line as well as anyone she'd ever said it to; he drew his head back and tucked in the end of his mask, almost as if arching his neck, in a way that seemed positively smug.

"Several of my eldest children married quite young," he went on. "We lost many people during our war and afterwards. There is a drive to replace them, to repopulate. And I was young myself when I started my family—we all were, myself and Niella and Karli, my first two wives."

"Following your example, then." She paused to shut off the tank machinery—the exchange was finished—and leaned in to inject a measured amount of nutrient fluid into Grievous's chest cavity before removing the connections and securing his gutsack. Grievous watched her. He'd clearly decided he wanted to talk after all and seemed remarkably open, friendly almost. "So is this new kid anything like you?" Lissa asked, her own manner becoming more casual in response and a little teasing. "A little general in the making, maybe?"

Grievous perked up all the more. "Yes he is. He looks like me, a first."

"What do you mean, 'a first'? Don't your own kids look like you?"

"No. They all resemble their mothers."

"Oh." Lissa looked a bit askance at him. "I'm a little surprised to hear that, sir."

"Why?"

"Well, you seem quite…dominant. I would expect it would show in your children."

"Ah. No, that is not always so." Even though Lissa had just finished closing his chest and his session was now technically over, he made no move to leave, even settled back in his chair again. "Traits sometimes skip a generation," he explained. "None of my children look like me, and I don't resemble either of my parents." He rose to his subject, one of his favourites, as he spoke, his voice becoming ever more animated. Breeding was a serious and absorbing matter for a Kalee! "I have been told that I am most like my maternal grandsire. He was a soldier, an officer, and a very promising one, but he was unlucky in his fate. He lived only long enough to produce a single offspring, my mother."

"I see…" said Lissa. "So you're saying…you're not from a military family then? You don't have that tradition behind you?"

"Not at all." Grievous was now almost sprawling in his chair, lolling over onto one armrest and rubbing a hand absently over one thigh. Lissa got the impression that she was seeing him in a truly informal state for the first time. "My parents were farmers. We raised meat stock and grew fodder crops. I was the only boy who ever had any interest in soldiering."

"Oh. Well, that's…a tad unusual."

In truth, she thought it ironically bizarre. A feared and brilliant general like Grievous arising from the most pedestrian of backgrounds—it was hard for her to reconcile the two. She turned away from the cyborg for a moment to put away a few more items and when she turned back to him found him still posed comfortably in his chair, watching her through slitted eyes.

"But some of your own kids must have some interest, don't they? I thought your people had a warrior heritage," Lissa said, a little puzzled.

"We do. We have a militia—all the males train for it. The best warriors, the ones of suitable temperament, are then offered a place in our military if they wish to make a career of it. It is considered a profession of high esteem with us."

"Gotcha. So did any of your children join up then, or are they heading there, or…?"

But Grievous was already shaking his long narrow head in the negative. "No, none of them. One of my older boys is a professional hunter and another may take up the career also, but that is as close as their interests and abilities have taken them."

"Oh. Er, sorry."

Grievous tilted his face quizzically. "Why do you say that?" he asked. "Apologize like that?"

"Well, um, it's a little disappointing, isn't it? Just about all the parents I've known seem to like it when their children follow in their footsteps."

"Footsteps? They track them?"

"Follow their example, I mean. Chose the same profession. Parents like that…er, human parents do…mostly."

"Ah, I understand. No, there is no disappointment," said Grievous. "Our attitude towards our offspring is different than your own, I think. They are individuals from birth and expected to find their own paths. We do not consider them extensions of our adult selves or reflections."

"That's…quite a refreshing outlook, sir."

Refreshing? It was bloody amazing! Something important must have happened, Lissa thought. He'd come to some profound decision, perhaps at the meeting he'd just attended, or gotten some crucial news, or maybe it was just that another chunk of his ravaged mind had finally rewired and restored itself. She felt behind herself with one hand and stepped back to half-sit, half-prop herself on the edge of her own workstation table without ever once looking away from the alien cyborg. Whatever had triggered his sudden chattiness, it was something she very much wanted to encourage.

"General Grievous, would you be willing to help me understand something I learned about your people a while ago, something else related to your social attitudes?" she asked.

"Go on."

"It's about your social structure," she continued earnestly. "When I researched your species background, I kept coming across references that you males were the dominant sex. But I also found a note that you defer to females."

"Yes?"

"Well, which is it? I apologize if perhaps I'm treading on sensitive subject matter, I just couldn't find any more information about it, and it's…the discrepancy's always nagged me a little, sir, ever since I came across it."

"Oh," Grievous said, or at least he uttered a short mumbling grunt reminiscent of the word. He didn't seem to mind that she'd been snooping around about his people's habits. "There is no discrepancy. Males are dominant in matters of politics. Females see to our social lives. That is all."

"Social lives? You mean like—what? The way you interact with each other? They plan events and stuff?"

"No, no, it is much more important than that. Females…it is their duty to plan our breeding, to make good matches."

"Like arranged marriages, you mean?" Lissa said, still confused, and for some reason that amused Grievous; he actually laughed aloud, one of his harsh little coughing chuckles.

"That would be a fine thing, to tell a woman how to arrange anything," he said. "No, in this, I—all males—have very little power. We may have our preferred mates, potential mates, that we may court and befriend. We can put all the effort into impressing them that we like, but in the end it is they who chose us and allow us to live with them and father their children." He went silent a moment, turning pensive. Lissa saw the hard glint in his eyes feather out, softening, his focus shifting and growing more distant. "We have a saying on our world: Men are the custodians of the planet, women are the custodians of the people. It is very true… Females shape the genetics of future generations by their choices. Males only guard what is already there."

"You guard…" Lissa's quick mind hop-scotched about, tying together dangling threads, drawing conclusions. "So your regular military must be…male only? You don't let your women serve, do you?"

Grievous jerked his head up, his soppy interlude instantly over, looking startled. "Of course not!" he exclaimed.

His physician lifted a hand to her face and began rubbing over her lips and chin, pretending to scratch and ponder on while she hid a big grin. She'd guessed right. It was starting to fall into place for her, all the hints and certain oddities of behaviour; even Nagas's assurance that Grievous would be inclined to listen to her made better sense now. Lissa studied the big cyborg happily. How good it was to finally have a halfway genuine, casual conversation with him! And how gratifying to see him able and willing to share information about himself at last and recalling his facts and memories without hesitation or any evident lingering difficulty. He was recovering, regaining his personality, becoming whole and well again. Lissa's own pride rose up at that moment, and in her justifiable conceit over the success of her work she made one crucial error; she forgot that his psyche was, in many respects, still severely damaged and very alien.

"What would a male Kalee's most important duties be?" Lissa went on, eager to continue their talk and take advantage of his good mood while it lasted. "Protecting your family would be one, I presume."

"That is paramount, yes. Safeguarding the family, ensuring that one's wives are secure and content, getting them bred when they wish it—I was not so good at that sometimes because I was gone so much. Then we must also help protect our clan's interests, our stock and game, our hunting grounds. We all do our share and some of us specialize in that."

"Like game wardens."

"Yes! You have read of this, have you? Are familiar with this?"

"We-ll, not that much. It's more that I've known people, other aliens, who share some of your hunter-warrior traditions. There are always certain base similarities in such cultures, even some human ones."

"Huh," Grievous remarked. He didn't much care to contemplate any parallels between his own people and other species. He liked to think of the Kaleesh as being utterly unique and a little superior. "I think humans maintain such traditions only for sport. For us, it is a way of life. And not all of you practise warrior skills—we do."

"Maybe not everyone," Lissa countered mildly, "but we do have a few warriors kicking around, the Jedi Knights for one. I think their membership's still predominantly human, even though the Order's open to people of any species."

"Jedi!" Grievous spat. "They may have some skill, but they have no honour. They're assassins and murderers, not warriors."

"Oh, come now. There's nothing more goody-goody than a Jedi. They're practically—"

"It's because of Jedi that I wear this body!" Grievous interjected angrily. "They tried to kill me, assassinate me, on my own homeworld." He flipped one hand up in a derisive, dismissing gesture. "So much for your Jedi honour!"

"Wha-at?" Surely she hadn't heard right! "What do you mean, they tried to assassinate you? Jedi don't do that."

"They sabotaged my shuttle on Kalee by planting a bomb," Grievous related, forcing each word out as if through gritted teeth. "It went off and I crashed. I barely survived."

"The Jedi made your shuttle crash?" Lissa reiterated stupidly. Bewildered, she shook her head. "But that doesn't make any sense. Are you sure it was a Jedi who planted the bomb?"

"Yes! They did it!"

"You have proof of that? Someone saw them?"

A fine shudder passed through the cyborg's frame. "I— They wanted me dead," he insisted. "I know they did."

"Well, maybe so, but they still wouldn't try to assassinate you. They aren't allowed to do things like that."

"They did try! I am certain of it. San Hill said—"

"Excuse me, General," Lissa interrupted, too troubled and annoyed to be polite any longer, "but I really do think you ought to yield to my greater experience in this matter. Now, I'm no fan of the Jedi, but I do know they have these very strict rules governing their behaviour. I've never heard of them using sabotage to target anyone and I know darn well that their Council never sanctions assassination, even when it seems warranted—I even remember there being a public debate or two about that." She paused and her brow began crinkling up, her eyes narrowing with some suspicion of her own as the latter part of Grievous's last outburst sank in. "What was that you just said about San Hill?"

Grievous shuddered again. "He told me that it was the Jedi who set the bomb."

"San Hill told you that? But he's the chairman of the Intergalactic Banking Clan!"

"Yes, and—and I worked for him then. And—they rescued me."

"The Munns rescued you? From the crash site? You mean to say they were there on Kalee, conveniently present when this accident occurred?"

She stared at Grievous and he stared right back, without replying. Instead, he started clutching at his chair. The thick padding on the armrests indented deeply as his fingers began to squeeze. He drew his head in, almost ducking it, as if recoiling, yet the rest of his body sat bolt upright.

"General!" she persisted, "Does that not seem very odd to you, that they'd be right there? And the IBC, it was one of the very first organizations to join the Confederacy, wasn't it?"

Another stare. It was his wilful look, angry and defiant, laced with something else she couldn't identify yet. "No," he snapped.

Lissa was unsure of which part of her query his response was meant to answer. "Well, I know they joined up early," she replied. "Any Munns I've talked to about it have said they were Separatists long before the war started. So they must have known Count Dooku even back then. And if they were already willing to do to you what they did when you were hurt, then maybe you ought to reconsider whether it was—"

"No!"

Grievous shouted it this time, furiously. One hand came up again, to point at her, the slender digit stabbing at her through the air.

"I don't want to hear any more of this!" he cried. "I won't hear it! It was the Jedi! No one else!"

"But, sir—"

"Enough!" he roared and leapt out of his chair. Lissa got a brief impression of his body crouched to spring, his arms poised, his eyes blazing with rage yet somehow also expressing hurt and confusion, then he whirled about and stormed out in a terrific huff. Just like that. Without explanation.

Lissa, who'd straightened up onto her own feet as soon as Grievous had jumped up, began trembling herself. Wow! Evidently she'd not only stumbled onto one of his sore points, but had jabbed at it with a full payload of pointed sticks! Embarrassment crept over her, pinking her cheeks, drawing her lips back off her teeth in a self-conscious grimace. She should have clued in the instant he'd started stiffening up. She always pushed it too far, got caught up in her own rhetoric when stuck on a subject, and she knew perfectly well that it was not a safe thing to be doing with anyone who held a great deal of power over her. Then she remembered Grievous's ordering her never to lie to him, ever, and the memory of his own directive and his snooty attitude hardened her up again like nothing else. Fine! If that was how he wanted it, then that was what he'd get. She'd only pointed out the holes in his damned silly flawed assumptions, after all!

Reasoning through what had just occurred calmed the woman's own nerves and stamped out any budding guilt, and she plopped herself right down on her workstation chair again with some grim defiance of her own. Grievous had been far too angry for there not to have been some truth in her postulating. Lissa had a feeling he'd be back before long, if only to yell at her some more while he stomped around and postured, and in the meantime, she had plenty of reading to catch up on. Nothing new about the Kaleesh, though. Grievous had told her more about his people before he'd wigged out than she'd been able to find in months. She relaxed some more, her indignation fading, and sighed. That part of it had actually been very pleasant, interacting with him like that, like two normal adults…she really ought to work more on coaxing him along and trying to befriend him. It would be a lot healthier for Grievous if only he would trust someone enough to confide in them instead of always running off to stew in his miseries and rancour alone.

But for now, time to get that computer on and study!

TBC


	19. A Clear Unpleasant Danger

Blast from the past alert! If one of the scenes in this chapter seems vaguely familiar to some of you, it's because I was listening to a certain favourite old album when I was first visualizing the action and got indulgent. Think: cover art, and you'll get it.

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 19 – A Clear Unpleasant Danger

Lissa's hunch had been right. Grievous returned so fast that he could not possibly have gotten even so far as the bridge before changing his mind and turning around. He marched right back in without warning, jammed to a halt in front of her workstation, and thrust his head forward, still looking exactly as mad as when he'd left. Despite herself, even though she already knew how he'd answer, Lissa couldn't help exclaiming, "Are you all right?"

"No!" Grievous snapped. "Tell me again why you suspect the Munns!"

She went over all of it again, carefully, expounding on her suspicions and interpretations of what he'd said to her. Grievous stood hunched over the entire time, staring into her eyes, but his attitude was really not as threatening as it first appeared; she could tell he just wanted to get his face down close to her own to better judge whether she was speaking truthfully. Once she was done, he abruptly straightened up, jerked his head aside, then headed for her viewport. He started to pace, each step slow and deliberate, his gaze fixed, becoming glazed.

Lissa watched him glumly. She hated seeing him resort to one of his myriad stereotypic behaviours, but couldn't think of what else she could do just then to help him cope; there was only so much familiarity Grievous would allow. His upset grew, showing clearly in his body language. Even in the midst of this latest crisis Lissa couldn't help but notice how well the far more nuanced emotions he now felt were spilling over and being reflected in the way he moved and held himself. His ability to manipulate his droid components had become perfect. It was the most remarkable example of man/machine integration she'd ever seen, a degree of cyborg sophistication she'd never expected to see achieved within her lifetime. What a shame it had been accomplished largely though duplicity and force and for no other reason than to create yet another means of sowing destruction. Who knew what Grievous might have made of himself had he been a fully aware and willing participant from the start. More than just a murderous, driven warlord, surely…

She swallowed her lapse and tried to refocus on the matter at hand. "Am I wrong?" she asked.

Grievous's only reply for a long while was the rhythmic clacking of his footsteps. Then he seemed to come out of it. "I don't know," he muttered. He turned his head to regard the woman and blinked. "There is…Hill did ask me twice if I wanted more work. He said his associates were interested in me, in securing my services. I am trying to remember the sequence…yes, the first time was several months before the crash, then he asked several weeks beforehand."

"Oh," said Lissa. Worse and worser, as some of her dimmer workmates used to put it. "He meant Dooku, didn't he? He was asking on Dooku's behalf." Grievous came to a halt. His expression became aggrieved and a little bewildered.

"Is it so obvious to you? I never gave it much thought, what he meant by 'associates'. I had no intention of accepting any other offers. It was bad enough to have to work for the Munns and I wanted only to be done with our contract and to return to Kalee."

"Well, it's…it just seems likely that it was Count Dooku. Do you know who else the IBC was dealing with back then? Important people that they might have considered associates?"

"No."

His hunched posture with his legs splayed outward, his hanging head, his obvious distress…it was the closest Lissa had ever seen him come to looking utterly dejected. She shifted in her seat, uneasy and tense. An angry, aggressive Grievous was far easier for her to take than one that was miserable and sulking and liable to do anything next.

"Er, General?" she asked, more hesitant now. "I don't mean to pry, but how is it you came to be working for the Munns in the first place? If I knew more, maybe I could…help you."

Instant suspicion clouded the cyborg's eyes. How was he supposed to accept any alien's offer of assistance anymore when he was in the very midst of winnowing out all this new evidence of treachery? Grievous struggled briefly, torn between his need for support and his instincts. His decision, once made, came with an audible grunt and a quick stalk back over to the infirmary chair. He sat down hard enough on the seat to make his limbs clatter together, leaned forward and propped his metal elbows on his thighs, and said, "We had a war. With the Huk."

"Ooo-kay," Lissa replied, unsure of how she ought to respond to such a loaded statement. "Um, just to clarify for myself, these are the same people who call themselves the Yam'rii, right? Big insectoids?"

"Correct. We share a solar system. For a long time after we became aware of one another we tended mostly to our respective business, trading sometimes in the beginning, skirmishing later on isolated occasions. The Huk expanded their realm and claimed several colony worlds while we minded our affairs on Kalee and said nothing. And then…"

Grievous squinted his eyes half-shut, as if gripped by sudden pain. He pressed his palms together and his fingers began interlacing restlessly. "You have to understand—my world has few resources," he continued on, no longer looking at the woman. "We have barely enough to sustain ourselves. Yet those creatures chose to plunder us even so. They were very sly and insidious about it. They came at first in the guise of wanting to reopen our old trading traditions and managed to capture hundreds before we discerned their true intentions. We Kaleesh, we make terrible slaves. Many fought back so savagely when caught that they were fatally injured, a complete waste. After that, the Huk began to target the juveniles, thinking that they would be more docile, and the ones they couldn't subdue, they fed upon. When my people learned of this new outrage, we went wild. We all rose up in a fury, determined to destroy the invaders or die as a species in the attempt. I was in charge of the army and all the clans' militia by then and began to organize and coordinate our resistance."

At this point Lissa finally started and opened her mouth to protest. Oh, she couldn't have just heard what she thought she'd heard…could she? Grievous, immersed in his remembrance, ignored her reaction and continued on grimly, his duranium-clad fingers clicking like tapping bones as they rubbed together. Lissa sank back without saying a word and listened with increasingly horrified fascination. She'd just wanted to know why he was working for the Munns, she hadn't meant to unleash this seething diatribe!

"We appealed to the Republic for help, but they never listened. Never! It was too—they wouldn't believe us. But we won even so. All by ourselves! First we stole their ships and weapons. They thought us so naïve, the fools, they took no care at all. My men and I, we drove them from their camps. We drove them…drove them off Kalee, and when they tried to escape, into space, we went after them. That shocked them, it did. They didn't understand our pride, didn't know the depths of their sins. Idiot bugs! We slaughtered all that we could find and catch, the traders, the soldiers, their colonies on Abbaji and Tovarskl—all of them! Even the ones on their blasted homeworld, I could have found and killed them all if the Republic hadn't sided with them and stopped us!"

"What?" Lissa exclaimed. She'd been holding her breath for so long that it came out as a faint little squeak. "But you said— The Republic wouldn't—"

"Would not what? Choose the side of slavers? They would and they did! Because the Huk were successful slavers and the Republic only cares about those with wealth. Those are the people they welcome and help, the ones that can repay them. Never the victims!"

The cyborg's eyes flashed as he spat out the last word of his accusation. Lissa half-imagined she saw sparks fly, he was getting so hot. Abruptly, he shot back up onto his feet, overwhelmed by his own ill temper. Lissa stayed put, overwhelmed as well. His rollercoaster emotions were starting to wear her out, badly, and she almost wished she could tap into the rage which always seemed to energize him at such moments, hounding him like Furies.

Grievous went back to wearing a path in the deck before her viewport. When he resumed his tirade, his words were so curdled with snarling hatred that Lissa could barely understand him at first. It turned out that he was talking about the Jedi team sent to adjudicate the conflict.

"—ordered us to stand down. Arrogant cur! I answered with my sword, slashed open his chest before he knew what hit him. They disarmed and held me then. They killed my Izvoshra, my protectors."

Lissa felt her spirits sag all the more and shook her head a little in disbelief. What did you expect? she thought. What were you thinking, attacking them like that? Of course she didn't dare voice any of that aloud. She'd had quite enough already of the repercussions of provoking Grievous for one night.

Grievous wasn't voicing everything either. There was far more to the scene than he was relating. The Jedi hadn't just retaliated, they'd humiliated him, had flung him to the ground and frozen him in place with the Force while they dealt with his elite. Galien, Adelan, Belquil…all his dearest and most faithful, cut down in their prime, and all he'd been able to do was lie there watching and cursing and howling out his impotent rage and grief. The memory of it fired him up all the more. He whirled about at the end of his pacing path and started forward with a little lunge, a restrained version of the way he'd launched himself at the Jedi leader who'd demanded he cease his aggressions. If only he'd had his metal body back then! He'd've torn the man in two for his insolence, would have shredded them all.

"They ended the war then. They forced us to stop, to leave it unfinished, our enemies still free. I had no choice…" Another violent spin and lunge, punctuated with a twist of his head to one side, a savage shake of negation. "That was the worst, to stop us before we could claim our prize. Fighting the Huk had devastated us. Our herds were in shambles, my people so weakened by then. We needed the supplies we captured, just to survive. We needed the Huk's world and their resources, as was our right, to recover. But the Republic, they denied us that. They denounced us as the aggressors—us!—and imposed sanctions on Kalee. That was the end for us. We could no longer trade and no one would help us. We began to starve, first hundreds, then thousands. My own family went hungry during that time. Do you know what that is like, to watch your beloveds starve? To see them become weaker and thinner every day because of injustice and your own inadequacies?"

The cyborg's audience of one didn't, and what's more, didn't know what to feel anymore. Lissa had already shuffled Grievous from one moral category to another in her own mind so often that any fresh insights just made her head ache. She met the wounded glance he flung her way with an expression laced with equal hurt and much confusion.

"I'm sorry, General," she finally managed. "I don't know what to say."

"No. You wouldn't. I doubt that you have suffered as we suffered."

Lissa mulled over that one. It was painfully true, in part. All of her worst agonizing had been over intangibles. Grievous paced on. He was still striding fast, his head up, still taut and angry enough to scrape his talons through his turns, yet starting to simmer down despite all that. Ranting out his frustrations did seem to help, the physician within Lissa observed idly. Too bad it left his listeners somewhat bruised.

She concentrated again on what he'd said, trying to ignore how he'd said it. "I presume this is when San Hill first showed up," she prompted quietly. Grievous snorted, a clear sound of disgust.

"Yes, the bloody coward. He came and said his people wanted someone to lead their army. Ha! Some army. A collection agency with teeth is what it was. But what could I do. They were the first to offer us assistance…food… And the Banking Clan was already powerful, even then. They didn't fear the Republic's disapproval or censure. So, I worked for them. Anyone they wished to threaten, they sent me. And I was good at it! I had a reputation, I discovered—the Kaleesh warlord who beat back the Huk. It terrified them. Sometimes I would—"

Grievous all at once jolted to a halt. "I WAS good," he said with almost comical emphasis, as if trying to convince himself. "Why would they risk losing that? Risk killing me?" he added, addressing Lissa.

The woman shrugged. "Bigger concerns by then?" she guessed. "A way to ingratiate themselves with the new Confederacy leaders?"

"It would have been less risky to amend my contract, try and coerce me further."

"I think it was important to them that you be rendered more controllable, General," said Lissa, trying to choose her words with a certain delicacy. "Maybe they were even afraid that you'd turn on them eventually. They didn't want to chance giving you so much responsibility and power without some guarantee in place that you'd do only as told."

Grievous glowered back at that, breathing hard. "Guarantee. Like with a droid."

"I suspect they had more of a biodroid in mind, a highly sophisticated one. Some of your brain-work…I'm sorry, but the more I study it, the more it reminds me of that, like an attempt to excise or at least suppress your free will without losing anything at all of your creative processes." She shrugged again. "They failed, obviously."

"No," Grievous countered. "There is still too much uncertainty in what you say. I was too valuable to the Munns to…to experiment on."

"True, but I'd wager that as you are now, you're considered far more valuable. And that's for the benefit on the entire Confederacy."

Back to pondering… His fit seemed to have blown over completely. The look on his face was positively contemplative. He was also stuck on the notion of being experimented on; Lissa could see it was bothering him. "I still believe it more likely that the Jedi wanted me dead," Grievous said. "What you suggest…I don't like it."

"I know. And it's not like I enjoy upsetting you, sir—upsetting both of us, to be honest. I just—well, you did say you wanted to hear it all, good and bad. I just wish there was some way of confirming this. It's still just speculation on my part. I guess you can't very well call up San Hill and demand he tell you the truth."

Grievous huffed and bobbed his head. "That would be imprudent. And pointless. He is as devious as he is cowardly. The only ones I would ever trust to investigate this matter all live on Kalee."

"Oh, too bad. I suppose there's no way you could go home for a visit, is there, sir? Maybe fabricate some logical war-related reason to do so?"

"No. There is no reason. Any attempt would only draw suspicion upon me. And I should not even be thinking of home, I believe. I don't think I ever did, before."

"You couldn't swing a patrol that way? Pretend you have to investigate or chase something, just you in one of your fighters?" She stopped because Grievous had started looking at her very strangely indeed, as though she were impossibly dense. "Okay, forget that," she amended. "It'd be way out of your range anyway, I guess. Dumb idea."

"No, it is not," Grievous said. He paused, blinked several times, his whole demeanour brightening. "If I could find an opportunity…"

"Really?" Lissa sat up straighter. She hadn't expected him to take her seriously. "That'd be great then, General. You could get your sources to maybe find out for sure what happened. And you could see your family, make sure they're safe."

Grievous nodded his head. "Yes…yes, I worry about that. My wives, they always did try to spare me when I was away. They didn't want me fretting over family matters. I've wondered sometimes whether all is as well as they say."

"Then you should definitely try to get home, sir, if there's any chance at all. With a little luck, you'll even be able to confirm that the whole crash thing was a set-up, just like I said, and then you can stay home for good."

Lissa knew within three seconds that she'd just blown another one. Grievous started and stared at her again, an outright gawk this time. He almost looked aghast, his eyes had popped open so wide. "What?" he exclaimed, so startled that it almost sounded like a gasp.

"Er…your sources…could confirm it? Couldn't they?"

"You think I would stay home?"

"Uh… What?"

Now the poor woman was completely bamboozled. And Grievous wasn't just staring at her anymore as if she were dense, he looked as though he thought her a first-grade moron.

"You truly believe, after all this, that I would just go home?" he expanded, still sounding incredulous.

"Wouldn't you?" Lissa said, floundering ever further. "I mean, if you knew for sure— If San Hill had—"

"No! What is wrong with you! You yourself just spoke of my superiors' treachery!" Grievous roared.

"But— Well— I'm lost."

"Are you! Then let me provide navigation. Learning the truth would change nothing for me—nothing!—until the war is won and my service is done. I can't go home until then, no matter what the circumstances. And if I did try, if anyone of authority ever learned of OUR truth and what you have done to me, I would be destroyed. You would be destroyed. Kalee would be destroyed. That, my physician, are the terms you have wrought and which we must live by now. Stay home…stay home indeed! To be blown to the heavens!"

"Oh. Oh!" Lissa quavered. "I didn't think of that." Which was no defence at all, of course, and which only served to infuriate him into a fresh fit of helpless rage. It was such a bad one that he lost all his Basic. Only the growling curses of his own tongue would do as he stomped back and forth, temporarily lost in a satisfying fantasy world of vengeance and retribution and blood-letting. As for Lissa, she was imagining dealing out some punishment of her own—on herself. She'd done just what she'd sworn time and time again she wouldn't do, project her own human morality and expectations of behaviour onto another, and couldn't believe she'd fallen for doing it with Grievous again, despite everything she knew of the man by now. She was indeed a fool, a right twit. And if she had to listen and watch him rave on for a while longer because of it, even though it made her feel sick and scared inside and gave her the shakes, well, so be it.

A bad possibility all at once arrested the cyborg's stride. He stood frozen for a moment, then swung his head around and fixed his ugly glare on Lissa. She was still just sitting there, stricken, too absorbed by some concern of her own to take any notice of his glower. Grievous angrily swooped down on her.

"Are you going to break our agreement?" he demanded.

Lissa looked up, startled. Her face was pale and wet-looking.

"Excuse me?" she exclaimed.

"I said, are you going to break our agreement!"

"What? No!"

Much to his surprise, she jumped up, so suddenly that he had to jerk his head aside and straighten up to prevent her hitting him.

"Why would you— Damn it, I can't believe you'd even ask me that!" Now she was turning a blotchy red, the same as during her unexpected rant at Dooku all those months ago. Just as he had back then, Grievous regarded his physician with a certain fascination and befuddlement over what it was that had set her off. He sensed that he was the source of her aggravation, yet had no clear idea as to why.

His confusion cooled his own anger and he became sarcastic instead. "I fail to understand the cause for your indignation," he said, his voice tight. Lissa scowled, not at all mollified by his admission. She was thinking that it was his thoughtless remarks about Marku all over again.

"You've got some nerve assuming I'd break my word at all," she replied, just as stiffly.

"I have just told you of how my associates did just that," Grievous pointed out.

"I'm not like your associates! Geez!" Frustrated anew, she turned her back on him and retreated into her work alcove where she found some outlet in seizing hold of her heaviest wrench and slamming it back down on her table. Grievous's fascination flared into alarm. He had a sudden flashback of his first wife throwing a piece of firewood at him, back when he'd still been courting her and had inadvertently ticked her off.

Luckily for him, Lissa had more self-control. All she did was continue noisily repositioning her tools, then, once satisfied with their placement and calmer, she planted a hand on one hip and turned to confront him again.

"Look, I'm sorry that you've had a lot of bad experiences with people and can see why you'd be resentful and angry about it. But you can't just throw me in there with them—you can't! I said I would help you and I will."

"Humans—" He choked off the rest of it, but it didn't help. Lissa knew exactly what he'd been about to say anyway.

"—lie, that's it, isn't it? You were going to say humans lie! Well! Thank you very much for that vote of confidence, General. Thank you for comparing me to Dooku and—and whatever horrid cronies hang around him, and for thinking we're all such liars and conniving scum, even though I'm not like Dooku at all—I'm not! Y-you can't compare us. I'm just trying to survive here!"

Her voice rose again, her words becoming ever more incoherent as she sputtered on. Grievous became aware for the first time of how close he'd crept to Lissa during the course of their argument. He'd backed her right into very end of her alcove, was virtually looming over her in his frustrated impatience to understand, and just like any trapped animal, she'd begun to cower away from him despite her brave front. Of all people for him to be threatening—what was he doing! His physician was the one person he couldn't afford to alienate, not even in the slightest. Disgusted with himself, he averted his face and backed up several steps. Why was he always letting the blasted woman rattle him like this? He never had any trouble with all the other living nuisances who served him!

The sight of Grievous actually distancing himself jerked Lissa back to a painful reality all her own. Her rant choked off in mid-sentence, overcome by the appalled realization that not only had she just yelled at one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the galaxy but that she'd also intimated that everybody he worked for were treacherous scumbags. Nice one, she thought, cringing lower and avoiding eye contact with the doom hovering just above her shoulder. Of all the criminal offences common to any military she'd ever had dealings with, insubordination had to be among the worst.

The man she'd just insulted was harder to ignore. Grievous stood looking down at her, expressionless, his very silence a slap in the face. Lissa, deeply embarrassed, hung her head.

"I apologize, sir," she mumbled. "That was uncalled for."

The big cyborg stared steadily back at her, even though she was unable to meet his gaze. "It has been a long time," he said, "since I was scolded by a female."

It was such an odd and unexpected response that it startled Lissa into sneeking a peek. Grievous had tilted his face to one side. He looked as puzzled as she over what had just come out of his vocabulator.

"I didn't mean to scold," said Lissa, seizing the moment, infinitely glad that for some inexplicable reason he'd chosen to let her serious breach slide. Far better to be thought a nag than insubordinate, after all. "It wasn't even about you. Not really," she added. "I shouldn't have blown up at you even so, though."

Grievous regarded her solemnly. "Why did you?" he asked.

"You questioned my loyalty," she replied.

A knot of heat seemed to clench at the cyborg's few remaining vitals. The sensation spread. Even his true skin began to feel warm. Lissa, who was still scanning his face for some clue to his feelings, saw the light in his eyes shift and misinterpreted its meaning completely.

"It…was upsetting to me, sir," she went on in an earnest attempt to clarify. "The same way I'm sure it's upsetting to you when someone assumes you must be barbaric and simple-minded just because of your heritage. Not that I think you are, of course, not at all. It's just…that assumption… You get tired of it after a while."

This time Grievous suppressed a start. He'd been nursing his personal torments for so long and in such solitude that it was a shock for him to discover that they were by no means inviolate or unique. The wild idea that Lissa had been talking to Dooku in secret flitted through his mind. No, impossible...she clearly despised the Count. Yet how else could this little chit of a non-Kaleesh possibly comprehend and—even worse—share in his grievances?

As he often did when confronted by the inexplicable, he retreated again into sarcasm. "I did not realize, Miss Veleroko, that you were privy to what other people thought of me in private," Grievous remarked, doing his best to infuse his words with a dismissive sneer.

The woman just shrugged. "I'm not, sir. It just seems likely, based on other experiences I've had."

He had no immediate come-back for that one. Lissa waited in silence while her superior continued to study her. Her head was still spinning from struggling along in the cyborg's emotional wake. Quarrelling for real, not just amiably and to tease, had sapped her even more and she suddenly felt exhausted. Lissa no longer even cared anymore whether she'd made amends enough to avoid a reprimand. She just wanted out of this latest altercation with her skin intact.

Grievous was inclined to oblige her. The unpleasant conference, the impromptu battle, the terrible new possibilities put forth by his physician…it had drained him. "You are dismissed," he ordered.

It took a few seconds for Lissa to comprehend that she'd just been chucked out of her own office. Her mouth opened in protest, but the words died in her throat, withering beneath the cyborg's stony countenance. She dropped her gaze and made for the door as commanded. Grievous was still partially blocking her way and wouldn't move. Lissa had to squeeze way over to try and edge past him.

His arm shot out, stopping her. Lissa, fearful and unsure of what was wanted of her, looked up. Grievous carefully examined her face. "Tell Nagas I said you are to have the day off," he added, and turned away.

Lissa, surprised anew, looked over at her nearest monitor. She hadn't even thought about the time, yet he was right; the chronometer on the screen indicated that a new workday was indeed about to begin. She looked back at Grievous, but he'd already gone to her viewport and was staring out, his back turned. Hint taken, she took her leave, too tired and afraid of her temperamental superior's wrath to risk irritating him any further. She'd just have to put off tidying up her office and trying to repair any lasting damage done to their relationship until later.

Grievous paid no attention to his physician's departure. He was already too immersed in his new concerns to take any further notice of her.

The General's personal worries were soon overridden by a quandary. He'd returned to a fleet stuffed full of fresh supplies and ordnance which he was itching to use, yet had brought back two hard-worn task groups which were now sorely in need of replenishment of their own. Some of the returning vessels were also no longer battle-worthy. They'd need repairs, a commander to oversee the work…just the thought of having to go back into port and hang about the Resstoph Base all over again gnawed at Grievous's taut nerves. Then he recalled a certain backburner ploy and his bloodthirsty spirits rekindled and lifted. An hour's worth of scheming and several communiqués later, he was back in hyperspace and already back at battle stations, charging off again while his flagship's crew was still trying to muddle their way through their latest orders.

Grievous could have cared less about his subordinates' frazzled state. Neimoidian lives meant about as much to him as those of crawlies, the Kaleesh version of annoying gnats and mites: lower creatures that no doubt had their part in the overall scheme of life, but which he'd never hesitated to squash when they annoyed him. He also didn't care about the feelings of the Geonosian battle team who'd hastily come aboard and deployed to their usual station off the main hangar deck or those of his personal physician, who'd enjoyed all of about three hours of her supposed day off before being startled out of a sound sleep and back into action. For the moment, the General's battle-lust prevailed.

Lissa's grumpiness over being robbed of the benefits of what she'd thought was one of Grievous's rare magnanimous gestures vanished when they finally emerged from hyperspace and she noticed for the first time that the Invisible Hand was all alone—the rest of the fleet was nowhere in sight. The mystery deepened when they soon afterwards encountered and hooked up with a whole new collection of Confederate warships, most of them vessels of a type somewhat familiar to Lissa by now, some of them more exotic and unknown. The entire lot then promptly jumped again, a short hop this time, and emerged already overlooking a pretty blue and green hued planet. Six of the biggest warships at once swept forward and began disgorging smaller ships and fighter droids. The Invisible Hand began to run astern, assuming a command position and enfolding herself more deeply within the new fleet's protective wings. Lissa tore herself away from her office viewport at that point and paid a last preparatory visit to her washroom. She'd seen enough naval action by now to recognise the beginnings of a major strike and expected to be called out to play her part in the attack at any moment.

Down in the Invisible Hand's main hangar bay, the Geonosians on duty in the repair shop were also enjoying a show. The great carrier's war machines were coming to life. Thousands of droid brains had already sparked into action. Thousands more still lay quiescent but mobilized nonetheless, borne within carriers or sleds or other vessels all waiting their turn to rush into battle. As always, the din of the departing machines was horrific and the level of activity insane. The watching Geos had to clap their hands over their ear apertures at times as they hopped about, excited by the prospect of violence and death, even if at a distance removed. Towards the end, once the hangar was almost emptied, Grievous himself marched out onto the deck to join them and they watched together as several last colossal new weapons were deployed. The sight of them drew immediate clicks and coos of admiration from the insectoids and added a haughty, confident swing to the cyborg's stride when he led his MagnaGuard elite to their waiting ops shuttle.

Grievous's target on this occasion was Ballinex, a world whose immigrant colonies of humans and near-humans had so far managed to remain neutral due in large part to their relative obscurity. Ballinex lay in the Seswenna Sector, near enough to the Perlemian Trade Route to obtain all that was needed to maintain a comfortable level of civilization, yet distant enough not to attract outsiders. Most of the people living on Ballinex considered this a good thing. They liked their rather rustic way of life just fine and didn't like outsiders, or visitors either. Given the identity of the very latest visitors about to descend on them, such insular attitudes were perhaps forgivable.

Separatist fighter droids swooped in and took control of the skies over the planet's largest city, Hallidarfax, before its residents even grasped that an invasion was underway. Ballinex had no defences beyond municipal police forces and a modest volunteer army called out to deal with the odd natural disaster. It was simplicity itself for the invaders to overcome their shocked victims' equally modest technology and disable their communications before any resistance could be organized and then it was a free-for-all, with Hallidarfax already helpless and poised for grinding beneath the Confederate heel. Yet Grievous for once practised restraint. He had very special reasons for wishing to leave the city undamaged, and for long minutes the alien air machines did naught but cruise back and forth in precise formation. The watching Hallidarfaxians' terror began to ease, replaced by fearful wonder. Some even quit their shelters to come out for a better view and stood on the streets and sidewalks looking up, still apprehensive yet gripped by curiosity over what was happening.

A low crump of sound heralded an explanation of sorts. Plumes of smoke began to rise above the skyline on one of the long peninsular arms of land enfolding the port city. The fighter droids guarding the skies banked and streaked away towards the disturbance and converged again in a great cloud, so distant now that they appeared as nothing more than a swarm of gnats wheeling about in tight circles. Then, beneath them, looming up above the ragged line of the horizon, three great rounded shapes appeared.

The absolute smoothness of their outlines at once identified them as something artificial. More thuds—louder, closer—sounded. A flash of light flared beside one of the shapes, was joined by others. The silhouettes rose briefly, then sank again, and the startled citizens dotting the streets of the city finally realized what they were looking at; they were machines, massive machines, roaring down the slopes of the western peninsula and raining bolts of fire all about them as they came.

None of the gawking onlookers had ever seen a Commerce Guild spider droid in action. The shiny new upgrades now bearing down upon them were so staggering to behold and moved with such deceptive speed that many of the first victims of the attacking giants were fried while still standing outside their homes. The huge droids torched and swept through the outlying suburbs of Hallidarfax in mere seconds. They entered the city, bypassed its built-up center, and made straight for the harbour basin. Once there, they turned in unison and began to prowl the shoreline, using a handy promenade of railway lines. Anyone still out in the open fled before them, terror-stricken and ineffectual. The machines, utterly unopposed, inexorable, strode on.

A small flight of Voodoos broke out of the hovering cloud of fighters still accompanying the spider droids and flew down to the harbour frontage closer to the city's center. Several strafing runs took care of any lingering gawkers. A shuttle swooped down and landed briefly far out on the end of the largest dock and took off again. The passengers who'd disembarked from the shuttle spread themselves out, with eight of them—identical apparent droids despite their cloaks and head-cloths—falling into line behind a ninth far more unique figure. General Grievous, Supreme Commander of the Separatists' mighty droid armies and deputy leader of their Council, had come to town, and it wasn't for the sea air or the souvenirs. He'd come to watch his beautiful new weapons strut their stuff while Hallidarfax quaked in fear.

While Grievous was absorbed in admiring his handiwork, a reporter hiding on the third floor of an office building overlooking the harbour crept to the nearest window and from there, almost vomiting with fright and excitement, shot the footage which would make his career. The Separatists had stopping jamming communications midway through the attack. The reporter was able to stream his images offworld through his station's transmitter with little delay and they aired virtually live as breaking news on the Republican HoloNet. What viewers saw that day was stunning, what seemed at first a charming summer-day waterfront scene that would not have seemed out of place on a postcard juxtaposed against a background orgy of marine destruction. On the far shore of the harbour, three glittering alien engines of destruction strode through the shallows on lofty stilted legs, smashing aside ships still tied to their jetties and obliterating the warehouses and equipment onshore with blazing laser fire. In the foreground, loitering with his droid elite on a dock as casually as if they were a flock of tourists, stood the unmistakable gleaming white figure of General Grievous. The sea breeze was whipping his cape back off his pauldroned shoulders into a grey and scarlet pennant, otherwise he remained motionless and watched the violence unfold before him with incongruous calm. Never again would the Knight Slayer appear on camera during a battle looking so serene, so unsettling. His brazen confidence and disregard for any retaliatory fire made it clear that he'd already assessed his enemies' efforts as inconsequential and that he considered Hallidarfax as good as conquered.

Even Lissa saw the footage on the big monitor kept constantly on and tuned to the HoloNet news in the officers' mess aboard the Invisible Hand. She'd finally clued in that her services would not be needed and gone to find out what was happening from one of the sharpest people on the ship: the chief steward in the senior officers' mess. The steward, Lissa had learned, could monitor ongoing battles with almost as much precision as the entire operations team, thanks to much shameless eavesdropping, and was always eager to share his overheard conversations with one of the few people on board who was not put off by his lowly status. He was the one who finally explained to her that the fleet they'd hooked up with was the one normally commanded by Lucid Voice; Grievous had switched flagships in order to pull a fast one over the stupid Republicans, the steward opined gleefully. Lissa eventually parked herself by the wardroom's bank of viewports and let the chatty steward keep her supplied with further gossip and java juice while she moodily stared out at all at the borrowed warships. The only thing the Neimoidian couldn't tell her was why the hapless planet under attack was being targeted at all.

When the HoloNet show abruptly switched over into its breaking news format and Lissa first saw her volatile boss onscreen, she just about choked on a mouthful of java. The Neimoidian commander who was sitting nearby and snatching a quick meal dabbed hurriedly at his lips with a napkin, then jumped up and hustled out to return to his ops section. As Lissa watched, a small corvette-sized vessel bearing large lettering on its sides entered the fray from the left and began steaming across the choppy, whitecapped surface of the bay directly towards the metal titans on the other side of the harbour. Grievous's head turned fractionally, his sensor plates tilting forward. Perhaps he also issued some inaudible command intended only for droid receivers for the Commerce Guild machines began turning as well, away from their shoreline. The foremost of the super spider droids strode forward a few steps further out into the water and all three together fired their dual lasers at the charging ship. The beams flickered over the vessel, lightly. Lissa got a very brief impression of the ship falling apart into so many slices before all was consumed by an abrupt, violent explosion which geysered the remnants upward. Grievous and his MagnaGuards, still unmoving and safely out of range and still perfectly calm, watched the debris rain back down. The spider droids returned to their methodical massacre. Oh, thought Lissa, so that's why he doesn't need me down there. Those people can't fight back at all. Then she wondered, with sinking dismay, how she could have become so callous as to even think of something so inane and heartless when she'd just witnessed a bunch of people being blown sky-high.

The emotions felt by the billions of casual viewers who saw Grievous lord it over Hallidarfax that day were as nothing compared to the panicked consternation the footage engendered within the various Republic intelligence agencies. The cyborg commander was supposed to be in the Seswenna Sector, not off near the Perleman Trade Route attacking Mid Rim planets that were of little use and no threat whatsoever to the Separatists! Just as bad was the irrefutable evidence of a brand new type of major Separatist weapon whose very existence, until that broadcast, had gone completely undetected (no thanks in part to Sidious's own machinations). The int people started scrambling to catch up, most of them feeling as sick as did the reporter shooting the news footage. It was far too late for any effective damage control. Their failure was already out there, on the 'Net, for all to see.

The broadcast cut off abruptly when Grievous turned and appeared to look straight up into the recording lens. Many viewers shuddered over this parting shot, thinking that he must have detected that he was under surveillance, and feared for the luckless cameraman. In truth, the reporter had simply lost his nerve once he saw the cyborg's full grisly face and glowering eyes, and Grievous had only lifted up his head to watch his incoming ops shuttle. The shuttle landed and picked up the General and his entourage while the reporter was still trying to cram himself into the smallest, most inconspicuous ball possible under a heavy table. He never saw the Separatists blast away or even registered that the monster machines on the far side of the harbour had halted their attack.

The three super spider droids stomped out of the water in formation and carelessly smashed their way up a slope and through a district of upper-scale housing to an open greenbelt. Grievous was already there, disembarked and standing on the grass and waiting for them, and so were three hovering deployment sleds. The droids spaced themselves for retrieval and began partially retracting their legs. The sleds swooped in, descended and grappled onto their respective spider droids, and the paired machines then lifted up to fly back to the Invisible Hand, accompanied by a few covering tri-fighters and Vulture droids. Grievous watched it all with his bright eyes glimmering with satisfaction. The new spider droids had performed perfectly, just as programmed, and their support units equally so. The amount of devastation they'd wrought was even more gratifying, much better than anticipated from simulated scenarios, and, judging from the surprising lack of resistance the spineless Hallidarfaxians had offered, the droids' increased size had excellent improved intimidation factors which were well worth the added costs. Well pleased, Grievous boarded his shuttle and blasted off after his new weapons. That his simple field test had shattered or destroyed the lives of thousands and left the Hallidarfax harbour in ruins was of zero consequence to him.

Once back aboard his flagship, it didn't take long for Grievous to learn that he and his deployment exercise and weapons test had become the inadvertent stars of the HoloNet's hottest news item. The cyborg's attitudes towards the media had changed considerably since he'd regained his personal memories, and as soon as he had the time, he watched the reports his droid officers had saved up for him with a shrewd eye towards their propaganda potential. The coverage couldn't have been better than if he'd written and directed it himself. Already the audience response was switching from shock and confusion to a real rage at Those In Charge for their 'lack of preparedness' and for 'letting such a terrible thing happen'. The only part that gave Grievous pause was seeing himself standing on the dock with his MagnaGuards for the first time. A hint of the humiliation he'd often felt under Dooku's manipulations surfaced then—he looked so much like the droids accompanying him!—but it was a fleeting old ache and one he was able to quickly quash beneath logic and his vanity and memories of his physician's oft admiring glances. He ordered his staff to continue monitoring the Republic broadcasts and to start editing out and saving anything relating to himself or his actions, no matter how innocuous, until further notice.

Grievous slogged through some last necessary paperwork while his borrowed fleet stood down from battle stations and did a short jump to a nearby system. They regrouped near a spectacular multi-ringed planet supporting an extended family of fast-moving moons and began conducting a series of additional weapons tests and drills, sometimes using the moons as target practice. Even though the system was uninhabited, Grievous expected that his ships would soon be detected by Republic spies and made no effort to hide their presence and activities. He even took part, and personally led several squadrons of fighters through their paces as the hours wore on. Just after the last watch of the regular day changed over, the cyborg went out again, solo this time, in his Geonosian fanblade. He'd picked up a suspicious signal emanating from the vicinity of one of the outlying planets during his last sortie, he reported, and decided to assign himself the mission of investigating whether it mightn't be one of the anticipated spies.

It turned out to be some mission. Grievous was gone all night. When he finally did return, early the next morning, he disembarked and departed for his quarters without saying a word, and the current watch officer up on the bridge, who was sleepily trying to keep his eyes open during the last hour of his shift, merely noted that the General was back aboard without giving it any real thought. Shortly thereafter, Grievous ordered the Invisible Hand to break off and return to the Seswenna Sector, and the matter of his overnight absence and the mysterious signal was forgotten.

The hyperspace jump this time was a long one. Grievous recalled his physician and told her that a lengthy campaign was imminent and that he needed to be in tiptop condition. He wanted a complete workup, both medical and mechanical, and Lissa nodded her understanding and set about her work at once.

The first thing she insisted on doing was re-evaluating his respiratory issues. The new test results, unfortunately, only made her scowl again. Grievous's lungs hadn't improved at all. But neither had they deteriorated any further, and with some basis of normal capacity now established, Lissa felt safe in administering a little therapy. She had Grievous inhale an aerosolized dose of a drug she thought might suit his species well, then retested his lung function. This time the results left her smiling.

"That's better," she said, showing him the latest data. "We've got you up over seventy percent now, a real improvement!"

Grievous looked the numbers over dubiously. He hadn't liked the sudden sharp sensation of freezing cold he'd felt within when he'd first inhaled the drug, and it'd made him cough afterwards, once Lissa said it was all right to stop holding his breath. "I still don't feel any differently," he said.

"Maybe not, but you'll be much better able to handle any future damage now, providing the treatment has lasting effects. I'll have to keep monitoring you pretty closely, of course, until I can figure out a proper drug regimen. With a little luck, sir, we might even be able to turn this around permanently."

Her temperamental patient remained unconvinced. The last thing he wanted just then was a lot of unplanned interruption in his life. "You will have to figure it out during my scheduled routines," he told her. "I won't have time otherwise." And that was the last said about the matter on that particular day, for even Lissa caught on then that he was in a mood and unwilling to entertain the subject any longer. His brusque rejection of her concern disappointed and rather annoyed her, but—well—that was Grievous for you. Gratitude wasn't exactly up there on his list of sterling qualities.

His mood lasted throughout his appointment. It was hard for Lissa to get a handle on what was preoccupying him this time. Perhaps it was just that he was still in a snit over their last argument. Since he'd ordered the extra tests and diagnostics himself, she felt safe enough in explaining all her various findings and expressing a bit of satisfaction now and then over how good they were, yet none of it ignited any particular answering enthusiasm in him, nor did he ever truly relax, not even during his hot wash and bacta fluid change. His air of grim resolve and the cold look in his eye robbed Lissa of much of the usual pleasure she got from working on him. She took both personal and professional pride by now in having gotten Grievous to the point of actually enjoying his maintenance sessions, but there was little joy to be had for either participant during this particular encounter.

As soon as his last procedure was finished and he'd gotten Lissa's verbal stamp of approval, Grievous simply got up and started to leave. Lissa's own resolve broke at that moment. It was the trace of weary despair she'd caught surfacing in his expression as he turned to go that finally did her in.

"General Grievous!"

The unusual sharpness in her tone arrested him at once. He swivelled his head back around to regard her.

"Yes?"

"I—um…" Now that she had his full attention at last, she felt momentarily at a loss for words. "I…checked with flight control earlier. They said you were gone all night in your fanblade."

Silence. He merely waited, neither encouraging her nor forbidding her to go on.

"So I'm wondering…that is…did you manage to get home, sir?"

Her query, timidly spoken, seemed to release something in him. "Yes," he said, gusting the word out. He stood more upright and squared his angular shoulders. "I did get home, and back again, without incident."

"And everything's all right? With your family? Your world?"

Grievous appeared to consider her words carefully. "Everything is fine, yes. Kalee is still uninvolved in the war. Everyone has recovered well from the famine."

"Ah. Well, that's good!"

"Yes," he agreed, then abruptly grew distant again. "I have work to do. Nagas will inform you when you'll be needed at battle stations." And with that, he spun about and strode out of the office. Lissa stared after him, disappointed anew. All the ground she thought she'd gained with him had just seemed to crumble away.

Out in the corridor, oblivious to his physician's dismay, Grievous sped up and began to gait. He would never be able to tell Lissa—or anyone else—about the rest of it, about how his wives had begun to flinch away when he'd touched them and how his youngest children had backed up when he'd put out his arms, their little bodies stumbling and taut with baffled fright. It was exactly as he'd most feared. His family could handle his altered looks well enough. What they couldn't tolerate was what they'd sensed within, their growing suspicion that something inside of him had gone terribly wrong. It was even worse when he'd visited with one of his most trusted old friends, a former lieutenant of his who now oversaw the air defence of the whole of Kalee. His friend could access old records and checked for him whether there'd been any Republican aerospace traffic noted in the vicinity during the two days bracketing Grievous's disastrous crash into the Jenuwaa Sea. But the friend could find nothing, no records of any Republic ships near the crash site or anywhere else on Kalee within weeks of the incident. There never had been any Jedi.

Grievous winced inwardly at the remembrance and his body and head sank lower until he'd assumed his stalking predator's pose. The grief he'd kept hidden within since his return from Kalee flooded out and his golden eyes filled with a suffering as keenly felt as that of the billions upon whom he'd already unleashed his wrath. How could he have been so stupid? he thought miserably as he sped along. What had possessed him to believe his so-called rescuers and willingly allow himself to be duped into aiding their war? And once he saw what they'd done to him, how could he have been so naïve as to think that anything could still be the same afterwards, ever again?

TBC


End file.
